


J 



EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES OF 

VILLAGE AND RURAL 

COMMUNITIES 



•The 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON ■ CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA - SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

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THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES OF 

VILLAGE AND RURAL 

COMMUNITIES 



EDITED BY 

JOSEPH K. HART 

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION 
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON 



Keto fforft 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1913 

All rights reserved 



gb1 



Copyright, 1913, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1913. 



Nottoooo ipttss 

J. 8. Cushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



//** 



•CI.A354175 
*4I 



PREFACE 

There is nothing more characteristic of our present 
tendencies toward a more complete social democracy 
than the growing demand on the part of local communi- 
ties, everywhere, and of every sort, for a more funda- 
mental knowledge of themselves and their own native 
resources, physical and moral. This growing demand 
is natural and healthy. It marks the end of social 
superstition, and the real beginning of that social self- 
dependence and self-sufficiency which are promised in 
the completer developments of the scientific view of the 
world. 

Communities everywhere are making "surveys" : we 
are taking account of what we have in the way of de- 
veloped and undeveloped resources, both physical and 
moral, in order that we may know what we may count 
upon for community defense, community development, 
community pride, and that finer and wider community 
life which must come, if it comes at all, out of the still 
unknown resources of our communities. 

This book is offered by men and women of experience 
as a tool for the better development of this essential 
social understanding in rural and village communities. 
It is not only a book to be read and studied, in the ordi- 
nary sense of that word : it is also and much more a 
tool of inquiry, by the use of which teachers, ministers, 



VI PREFACE 

and social leaders in all lines may be enabled to reach 
that more complete knowledge of their immediate com- 
munities without which social leadership becomes mere 
irresponsible authority. 

Here set forth are the great main lines of community 
interest, activity, and resource. In most communities 
these activities "just go on," these resources lie latent, 
unrelated, undeveloped, and unknown. This book pre- 
sents three aspects of each of these lines of interest. 
First, each subject is represented in a general way as an 
aspect of the life and resources of any community. 
This is intended to call the student's attention to the 
social wealth that may be found in any community in 
connection with our common interests and resources of 
life. Second, by means of insistent questions in con- 
nection with each subject, the student is directed to spe- 
cific phases of that subject which should be looked for 
and very thoroughly studied in each local community. 
These questions are not exhaustive, but suggestive of 
the possible lines of investigation open to those who 
would know their own communities. Third, a brief 
bibliography of the subject is included, giving the seri- 
ous student hints of materials by which his aroused 
interest may reach out into contact with knowledge and 
progress along the same lines in all parts of the world, 
until his community becomes the world. 

It is hoped that this book will help the rural and 
village teacher, especially, to become more completely 
a part of the actual life and hope and purpose of the 
community. The natural social and moral resources of 



PREFACE Vll 

our country and village communities are enormous, but 
they are being pathetically wasted by reason of the 
lack of insight into the real processes of education on 
the part of so many of our teachers. 

We are indebted to all the past and much of the 
present for the materials of this book. It is a contri- 
bution to that growing " social conversation " by which 
we are talking out, and, to some extent, thinking out, 
the social problems of our times. Whoever finds help 
in it is indebted to society to add still further to that 
same " social conversation." This is a time when the 
help of every one is needed : for the understanding of 
his own community and its social problems, and for 
the sympathetic instruction of his neighbors and neigh- 
boring community toward the same end. The world 
grows one as fast as knowledge comes to break down 
old superstitions and prejudices. Communities will be 
everlastingly variant because their resources are variant ; 
but communities will become more and more of one 
general soul as their self-knowledge becomes more 
complete. 



JOSEPH K. HART. 



The University of Washington, 
Seattle, February 16, 19 13. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Introduction — The Community as Educator . i 
By Joseph K. Hart, Assistant Professor of Education, 
University of Washington. 

II. The Physical Resources of the Community . n 
By John Lee Coulter, Expert Special Agent for Agri- 
culture, Bureau of the Census, Washington, D.C. 

III. The Human Resources of the Community. . 29 

By Joseph K. Hart. 

IV. The Economic Activities of the Community . 38 

By John Lee Coulter. 

V. Community Health, Hygiene, and Sanitation . 66 
By Dr. Eugene Kelley, State Board of Health, Seattle, 
Washington. 

VI. The Local History of the Community . . 83 
By Reuben Gold Thwaites, LL.D., Superintendent of 
Wisconsin State Historical Society; Lecturer in History 
in the University of Wisconsin. 

VII. The Political Life of the Community . . 92 
By Joseph K. Hart. 

VIII. The Development of Outdoor Beautification 

in a Community 106 

By J. Horace McFarland, President of the American 
Civic Association, Harrisburg, Pa. 

IX. Economy and Beauty in the Homes of the Com- 
munity . . 120 

By Anna R. Van Meter, Sometime Instructor in Do- 
mestic Science in the University of Illinois. 
ix 



X CONTENTS 

CHAPTER TAGS 

X. The General Social Life of the Community . 131 
By Joseph K. Hart. 

XI. Recreation, Play, and Amusements in the Com- 
munity 143 

By Myron T. Scudder, Lecturer in the Montessori 
House of Childhood, New York, formerly Principal New 
Paltz State Normal School. 

XII. Moral and Social Deficiencies of the Com- 
munity 166 

By Professor Walter G. Beach, Department of Sociol- 
ogy, University of Washington. 

XIII. The Religious Life of the Community . .176 

By Rev. Christopher C. Thurber, Hinton, West Virginia. 

XIV. The Intellectual Life of the Community . 197 

By Mary E. Downey, Organizer for State Library Com- 
mission, Columbus, Ohio. 

XV. The Community Life as Curriculum of the 

School 213 

By Professor Harold W. Foght, Chief of Field Service 
in Rural Education, United States Bureau of Education. 

XVI. Community Activity in the Administration of 

Education 244 

By George W. Knorr, Special Field Agent, Bureau of 
Statistics, Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C. 



EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES OF 

VILLAGE AND RURAL 

COMMUNITIES 



EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES OF 
VILLAGE AND RURAL COMMUNITIES 

CHAPTER I 
INTRODUCTION 

The Community as Educator 

"The (school) is too much with us : late and soon, 
(Cramming, forgetting) we lay waste our powers : 
Little we see in Nature that is ours ; 
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon ! 
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon ; 
The winds that will be howling at all hours, 
And are up-gathered new like sleeping flowers ; 
For this, for everything, we are out of tune ; 
It moves us not. — Great God ! I'd rather be 
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn : 
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ; 
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea ; 
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn." 

In the older days of the primitive community when 
life was centered in the immediate activities and interests 
of a comparatively small group, practically all the edu- 
cation of the younger generation went on unconsciously 
in the midst of, and by means of, the social life and 
industries of the community itself. Here was the 



2 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

physical world in which they made their home ; here the 
resources by which they sustained themselves; the 
industries that supported them, that bound them 
together, that determined the level of their living, and 
the bent of their thinking; the forms of government 
and social organization which unconsciously molded 
the young ; the religious life that helped to enforce the 
controls that society needed for its preservation; the 
traditions, the legends and the history that brought the 
past to the support of the authorities of the present; 
the amusements, the games and the general social life 
that marked the times of leisure from work and from 
war : all these elements and others were involved in 
the common life of the community group, and day by 
day, even moment by moment, they wrought their 
silent and effective spell over the development and 
destiny of the children and the whole community. 

There was no school in the formal sense of the word ; 
and because there was none, all education was practical, 
thorough, and moral : practical because wrought out of 
the very life of the community; thorough because the 
tests were those of life itself, and none could call himself 
educated until the active world had passed upon his 
qualifications ; and moral because, both in purpose and 
in content, it was the community's own life and purpose 
wrought into the life and purpose of the maturing child ; 
such education was complete only when the child was 
thoroughly equipped with the desire and skill to con- 
tinue the traditions and the interests of the community. 



INTRODUCTION 3 

We have lost so much of this : no, it is not lost, it is 
merely lost to sight. "The (school) is too much with 
us." The school was a social invention, growing up 
(as all inventions do) for the purpose of helping the 
community, as it became more complex, to do some 
things which it could no longer do in the old, unconscious 
ways. But, like any institution, the school quickly 
learned how to claim everything in its field, until to-day, 
the average person never thinks of Education as being 
anything beyond those things which the schools give, 
or convey, or bestow. 

That is to say, we think very little to-day of the pre- 
dominant part which the common life of the community 
played in the education of boys and girls in the prim- 
itive world ; we think very little of the fundamental 
part which the common forces and elements of the 
community still play, in spite of all our schools, in the 
actual education of our boys and girls. We are blind 
to the deepest facts of our educational situation. We 
give our schools credit for educational results in which 
the schools have had no part, and by so doing we are 
not only blind to the actual facts of education, but we 
stand in the way of that larger growth and development 
of the schools that is so necessary if our modern educa- 
tion is ever to find again that truly practical character, 
that social thoroughness and that real morality which 
were the striking characteristics of the education of the 
older, simpler world. 

And the forces and elements for this community 



4 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

education are all with us. Not that alone ; for in spite 
of our ignoring and our ignorance of these facts, our 
boys and girls are being educated constantly by the 
communities in which they live. But, if we could 
get our eyes open, we could make these community 
elements and forces mean infinitely more than they 
now mean in the real education of our children. 
For example, in the wooded sections of the Mississippi 
Valley there is a wonderfully rich and varied bird 
life. But the average schoolboy learns to know 
half a dozen common birds by name : the rest are 
" sparrows," etc. ; yet here are hundreds of birds that 
come and go with the seasons ! And this is a simple illus- 
tration. 

In this book the effort is being made to help the 
teachers in rural and village schools, and social leaders 
of all sorts in local communities, to become conscious of 
the great worlds of interest and possibility that in some 
degree even now are helping to mold the lives and pur- 
poses of the children; but which, rightly understood 
and appreciated, can be molded in turn until their 
molding of the childlife shall be to the ends of practical 
understanding, through development, and complete 
moralization of the growing child. 

What are these community elements and interests? 
The physical resources of the community condition all 
the life and action of the child as well as of the commu- 
nity. The older human beings of the community inevi- 
tably determine the social world within which the child 



INTRODUCTION 5 

shall grow up to social maturity and responsibility. 
The economic relationships and industrial life of the 
community will largely determine the way he will think 
and talk, the range of his opportunities and the bent 
of his common interests. The health of the community, 
its intelligent care for health, its interests, or lack of in- 
terest, in hygiene and sanitation will determine largely 
the efficiency and energy of the growing child. He will 
feed upon the traditions, the folk tales, the heroic stories, 
the desires, the prejudices, the hatreds, the feuds, and 
the inherent friendships of the community: its people 
shall be his people, and its gods his gods. The com- 
munity government will tend to control and manipulate 
his chances of life; it will make a fine and noble life 
possible, or it will tend to produce conditions that will 
kill off all the chances of complete living. The out-of- 
doors will nurture him and feed his imagination, or it 
will remain a sordid and low thing, to be manipulated 
for the sake of profit. The very home itself will reflect 
the inner life of the individual, just as he reflects the inner 
life of the community : the home will be a place of beauty 
and life and culture, or it will be in some other degree 
removed from the level of the den of the wild beast. 
The general social life of the community will inspire him 
and draw him out and fill him with social aspirations 
and the finer social sympathies, or it will tend in some 
degree to destroy all these in him. With wholesome 
recreation and play and with social amusements he will 
recover his strength spent in the work of the day and the 



6 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

week, or through all his childhood by playful exercise 
prepare himself for the serious doings of his maturer 
years. By the social idealism of the religious life of the 
community he will be able to link his life with the ideal 
purposes of the race ; or if these be wanting he will find 
a life on the more mean levels of existence. And in the 
provisions which the community shall have made or shall 
make by which the streams of knowledge from all the 
golden hills of the past and present shall flow into the com- 
munity will his intellectual life be enriched or destroyed. 

And blessed is that community in which there are 
leaders who are wise enough to have realized that their 
own community is, historically, a part of the story of 
man in all the ages, and geographically a part of the 
home of man ; and that in its life and interests and ac- 
tivities may be found something akin to everything the 
race has wrought at any time, in any place ; that there- 
fore its own activities and industries, and interests, and 
social necessities may quite as well be the central facts 
and factors in the schooling of its children as the activi- 
ties and industries and interests of a world far removed 
in time and space. All about the children, and the adults, 
too, surge and flow these forces and elements of the com- 
munity life. Into the midst of them the children are 
born and grow to their maturity. How little the schools 
seem when we set them over against this surging, insist- 
ent life of the community ! 

And yet, how much the schools might become if we 
could but see them in terms of their original significance, 



INTRODUCTION 7 

and in their proper relationship to the life of the com- 
munity. Once there were no schools, because they were 
not needed : the common life of the market place, and 
the religious ceremonial filled the child's days with ac- 
tive employment, his mind with social intelligence and 
purpose, and his heart with reverence and sympathetic 
fear. But as people came closer together, and life be- 
came more complex and involved, the education of 
the child became more technical and complicated; 
a profession of teachers arose, and the school became 
an educational instrument of the community. But 
the old elements and forces were still existent. The 
school did not, — it could not, — do away with them. 
It was developed to supplement in definite ways forces 
already in existence. It was not to supplant those 
forces, nor ignore them. And, because it was the last 
of the social institutions, developed to meet a social 
need, it would have been the part of wisdom for the school 
to be modest, and to learn to adapt itself to the changing 
conditions in the life of the community, striving ever to 
do those things which were not being done by some other 
element of the community's life. 

All about us are the contributions which are being 
made to education by those more primitive elements 
of the community which are far more fundamental to 
its welfare than is the school. These contributions 
are largely unintentional, incidental, accidental, — 
all the more effective just because of these facts. 
What is the school to do? Shall it, also, insist upon 



8 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

its purely institutional, i.e., its traditional, status, and 
upon being just as unintentional, incidental, and acci- 
dental as the other elements of our social life? That 
ill becomes its protestations of intellectual leader- 
ship. Should not tht, school and the teacher look deeply 
into the life of the community, surveying with thought- 
ful care all the resources, activities, interests, and elements 
that, within the community and its organic relationships, 
are making educational impression upon the growing 
children ? Should they not determine wherein the common 
life and activity of the community are already sufficiently 
educative, and should they not be wise enough to let such 
phases of life alone, giving to the immediate life of the 
people such share in the education of the children as 
that immediate life can do best? And should they not 
find wherein the educative direction of the children is 
being imperfectly, or badly, done, and should they not, at 
those places, bravely set to work, so supplementing, 
where help is needed, the power of the community that 
created the school ? 

There follow hereupon thirteen chapters dealing 
with these primitive elements in the education of the 
child and the community. Then follow two chapters 
dealing with the sort of school that is needed to-day, to 
meet the changed needs of our times. We have been 
educating our children away from their homes, their 
communities, and from work, toward false ideals of cul- 
ture, cosmopolitanism, and leisure. The only true cul- 
ture is the culture that comes through work and the 



INTRODUCTION 9 

love of work. The only true cosmopolitanism is that 
which grows out of, and is rooted deep within, some pres- 
ent community : the " man without a country " is the 
very antithesis of a true cosmopolitan. And the only 
leisure that is not vulgar is the leisure that is worthily 
won, and that is socially above criticism. 

The Community is the true educational institution. 
Within the community there is work that educates and 
provides for life ; within the community are the roots 
of the cosmopolitanism that marks the truly educated 
man ; within the community there is room for a noble 
and dignified culture and leisure for all. Let us become 
aware of our community resources, physical, social, moral. 
Let us recognize the part they play and will always play 
in the actual education of our boys and girls. Let us 
consciously extend their powers within legitimate bounds 
until our modern education within the community shall 
be, as completely as possible, natural, immediate, and 
free. Let us organize our socially supplementary in- 
stitution, — the school, — until it shall adequately reen- 
force the work of education where it is weak and supply 
it where it is wanting. So, and only so, will the child 
become really educated, the community find education 
genuine, practical, thorough, and vitally moral, and the 
school become in our times what it was originally in- 
tended to be, — the social instrument for doing those 
things of an educational nature which are not already 
being done more effectively by the primitive and un- 
conscious influences of the community's common life. 

J. K. H. 



IO EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



Elam. Outlines of Rural Community Life. 

Henderson. Catechism for Social Observation. 

Henderson. Social Duties. 

Bailey, L. H. Survey Idea in Country Life Work. (Pamphlet, 
19 pp. Address the author at Cornell University, Ithaca, 
N.Y.) 

Bailey, L. H. Cyclopedia of American Agriculture. 4 v. 

Crouch, Rev. F. N. A Social Service Program for the Parish. 
(Pamphlet of the Joint Commission on Social Service of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church, 24 pp. May be had upon 
request of the author, 157 Montague St., Brooklyn, N.Y.) 

Department of Church and Country Life. A Rural Survey in 
Missouri. (1910, 42 pp. Presbyterian Board of Home 
Missions, 156 Fifth Avenue, New York City.) 

Department of Church and Country Life. A Rural Survey in 
Pennsylvania. 1910, 40 pp. Presbyterian Board of Home 
Missions, 1 56 Fifth Avenue, New York City.) 

Dunn. Community and the Citizen. 

Earp, Edwin L., Ph.D. The Social Engineer. (Eaton & Hains, 
150 Fifth Avenue, New York City, 1911, 326 pp. $1.25. 
A book of special practical value to country ministers.) 

Galpin, C. J. A Method of Making a Social Survey of a Rural 
Community. (Circular of Information No. 29, January, 
191 2, 11 pp. The University of Wisconsin Agricultural Ex- 
periment Station, Madison, Wis.) 

Gillette, John H. The Drift to the City in Relation to the Rural 
Problem. {American Journal of Sociology, March, 191 1. 
v. 16, pp. 645-67. No. 5. University of Chicago Press, 
Chicago, 111. 50 cents.) 

Butterfield. Chapters in Rural Progress. (Chicago, 1908.) 

Anderson, Wdlbert L. The Country Town. 

Plunket, Sir Horace L. The Problem of Rural Life in America. 
(New York, 191 1.) 



CHAPTER II 
PHYSICAL RESOURCES OF THE COMMUNITY 

Characteristics of Physical Resources 

Introductory. — No comprehensive study of rural 
conditions or rural problems can be made without know- 
ing first of all something of the physical resources which 
are the foundation for the agricultural activities. The 
same statement may be made with equal force concern- 
ing an industrial community. I use the term " physical 
resources " in its broadest sense. We may well start 
any investigation bearing in mind that we have two 
primary factors to deal with. These are the human 
resources of the community and the physical resources. 
After we have clearly in mind the characteristics and 
quantity of the physical resources and the characteristics 
and number of the human resources, we are ready to 
begin an interpretation of the struggle of the human 
factor to make a living. It surely must be acknowledged 
by all that man's time is largely devoted to the struggle 
of making a living, and since this struggle is largely an 
effort on his part to control and utilize nature to the great- 
est advantage, it seems necessary first to investigate 
these two original factors. It is true that many men do 
not come into contact with the physical resources in their 



12 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

struggle for a living. There are those who prey upon 
their fellow men, and there are those who serve those 
who are struggling with the physical resources, but the 
general statement is none the less true that the great 
masses of humanity are engaged during the major part 
of their time working with nature and her products. 

By some good fortune, it has been arranged by an un- 
seen power that man does not need to struggle during 
all of his waking hours in order to make a living. Some 
of his time is spent communing with his fellow men. 
Man is a gregarious animal. On account of having 
the power of speech and other such powers, he delights 
in taking advantage of their presence and desires when- 
ever possible to get in touch with his fellow men. Hence, 
we have social activities. Some of his time is spent in 
religion. The general custom throughout the country 
is for at least one day a week to be set aside for religious 
activities and rest. The time taken for social activities 
is irregularly distributed over the year. There are 
scattered days throughout the year when people leave 
their labors and engage in social intercourse. Evenings 
very generally are devoted more or less to the same pur- 
pose. Certain seasons of the year when economic ac- 
tivities call for less than normal amounts of time are 
devoted more or less to social life. Political activities 
demand consideration. But during an average year 
probably not more than a very few hours are given to 
politics. The average man reads some, meets with other 
men from time to time for discussion, and probably 



PHYSICAL RESOURCES OF THE COMMUNITY 1 3 

one or two days during the year goes to cast his ballot. 
None the less, political activities demand some time ; 
and, more and more as people find the struggle for a liv- 
ing more intricate, the political problem calls for special 
consideration. Then there are recreation and other 
activities of a similar nature. I merely mention these 
to emphasize to the reader that starting as we do with 
the physical and human resources, these must be studied 
in such a way as to make possible a better understanding 
of the activities of the human factor. 

Topography. — In this study I shall limit myself to 
an analysis of conditions in so far as they affect rural 
communities. The problems of all industrial centers 
can be studied in somewhat the same way, but different 
influences have to be considered. Probably no influence 
is more important upon the lives of people than the 
topography of the community under consideration. 
The status of the farmers at any particular time and the 
agricultural activities are entirely different in the rough 
and rugged country from those in the level or slightly 
undulating country. Consider for instance the problems 
confronting a community of one thousand people settled 
in narrow valleys with precipitous mountain walls on 
either side. They are shut in from the outside world. 
It is difficult to get into communication with outside 
activities. For this reason the customs of the people 
at the time of entering the valley are apt to linger long. 
New ideas are slowly accepted. The educational, reli- 
gious and social activities of the people are greatly in- 



14 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

fluenced. Compare for a moment such a community 
with a community of one thousand people in a level 
prairie section. Try to determine to what extent the 
differences are due to the differences in topography. 
Compare as an illustration the recreations of the people. 
If both communities are in the northern climate, the 
sports of the mountain community will be skating on 
the little river during the winter, sliding down hills, 
skeeing, etc., and in the summer it will be climbing over 
hills through the timbered valleys, hunting in the moun- 
tain forests, and fishing in the mountain streams. In 
the prairie community there may be heard jingling bells 
in the winter time, and cutter and sleigh rides will be 
the favorite pastime. Snowshoes may be found. Skat- 
ing would be possible on artificially constructed lakes. 
Perchance snow boats would be found, and it might 
be, if the community were in the neighborhood of a 
lake, ice boats and skeeing would be a favorite pas- 
time. In the summer, baseball and other similar games 
would prevail. 

But agricultural activites are more influenced probably 
than are the social, religious, educational, or recreative 
activities. In the prairie country, large machines drawn 
by many horses pass over the level land ; great fields 
of grain will flourish. In the mountain valleys, on the 
other hand, a few rows of corn, small patches of cereals, 
small machines, each man with one work animal, or 
probably doing the work by hand, will be found. This 
is the difference in methods of conducting agriculture 



PHYSICAL RESOURCES OF THE COMMUNITY 1 5 

forced upon people by differences in topography. Those 
who are more prosperous because they have found a 
better community should not be given too much credit, 
while those who are not prosperous because they are 
combating with a harsh environment should not be 
too severely condemned because of their lack of pros- 
perity. In the mountain valley, the people may be kept 
busy during many weeks of each year repairing damages 
done because of the topography. The water rushing 
down the hillside may wash away their homes, or maybe 
destroy their fields; an overflowing river may do great 
damage. If the farmer attempts to market the product 
of his farm he may have to spend much time in the 
construction of roads over the hills and after having 
constructed the roads, he may find it necessary to haul 
very small quantities of the product because of the 
steep hills that must be passed over. But there are 
disadvantages to the community on the prairie which 
sometimes are as serious as the disadvantages found in 
mountain valleys. 

In beginning a study of a rural community, it would 
be well to make a careful survey of the topography as a 
starting point in order that the influences may be observed 
throughout the investigation. Much data may be se- 
cured from the Geological Survey, at Washington, D.C., 
which would be helpful to any student. Some state 
departments also furnish data and many physical geog- 
raphies furnish a basis for such study. 

Soils. — Topography is only one of the many factors 



1 6 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

to be considered. Turn your attention for a moment 
to two communities of farmers living in a prairie country 
with topography and all other factors the same, except 
that one community is in a district of very rich soils, 
whereas the other lives upon very poor soil. It is true 
that the religious, educational, and social activities 
may be the same except in so far as these are influenced 
by the prosperity of the farmers, but the agricultural 
activities will vary widely. In order, therefore, to 
interpret the status of either community we must in- 
vestigate very early the general character of the soils, 
whether they are rich loams, alkali, sandy soils, clay 
soils, or what not. I have in mind as I write two groups 
of farmers, both from the same country originally. One 
group came ahead of the other by twenty years and found 
large tracts of very rich soils, free, surveyed, and ready 
to be occupied. The other group came after all of this 
area had been taken, and they were practically forced 
to settle upon much less desirable soils of the same general 
topography, climate, and rainfall. It is scarcely neces- 
sary to state that the second group, although coming 
to this country at a much more opportune time, has not 
prospered nearly to the same extent as has the former 
group. The soils are not adapted to the best paying 
crops. They are sandy and it is very difficult to con- 
struct good roads. Much more labor is necessary in 
the field in order to produce a reasonable crop. The 
farmers must spend much time carrying fertilizers to 
the fields in order to make a reasonable crop. In this 



PHYSICAL RESOURCES OF THE COMMUNITY 1 7 

second community, because of a less bountiful nature, 
the farmers must spend much more time than otherwise 
struggling for a living. There is less time to build roads, 
to improve their homes, and to build schools and 
churches. There is also less money to buy materials 
and the farmers in this second community are less happy 
and much less prosperous than those in the first. I am 
unable to attribute this to anything less than fortuitous 
circumstances. The first group of farmers came at an 
opportune time. They found nature bountiful, — physi- 
cal resources were all that could be asked. The topo- 
graphy was right from every viewpoint and the soils were 
rich. It was not because the farmer waved the magic 
wand that the crops were bountiful. It was not because 
the farmers were more foresighted that they are now 
more prosperous. They took advantage of what they 
found, but the second group of farmers did likewise 
with less result. 

It is possible at the present time to secure a great deal 
of data concerning the character of soils in all parts of 
the United States. The Bureau of Soils, of the Depart- 
ment of Agriculture, Washington, D.C., has made many 
surveys in which they have studied very carefully the 
different kinds of soils, their adaptability to agriculture, 
and their proper treatment in order to get the best re- 
sults. These reports are available for all who may wish 
to write, and it would be wise for students to turn first 
to the Bureau of Soils, and find what areas have been care- 
fully studied from this viewpoint. After the student 



1 8 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

has examined these surveys, he may be able to investigate 
more thoroughly than he otherwise would be able to do. 
It is also possible at the present time to secure much 
data concerning the individual states from the various 
state departments, agricultural colleges, and agricultural 
experiment stations. Almost every experiment station 
now has a soil chemist and soil physicist. These men 
would be able to furnish much valuable information to 
the students within their respective states. A careful 
student going into any community to study conditions 
otherwise should keep constantly in mind the influences 
of the soil, and by talking with progressive farmers 
might be able to secure much valuable information which 
would help him to interpret the activities of the people 
and to explain their status. 

Precipitation. — If the study is to be thorough, the 
student of rural conditions must not be satisfied with a 
general statement of the topography and of the soils. 
He must go into this in great detail, and then must ex- 
tend his study to other problems of rural importance. 
Probably no characteristic of nature is more significant 
than that pertaining to rainfall. One group of farmers 
may settle in an area where the precipitation is excessive. 
They may find it necessary to build dikes, levees, ditches, 
or even place tiling at frequent intervals on the farm for 
drainage purposes. The fact that the country has too 
much water may make a demand for higher and better 
bridges, more horses and other work animals, more ex- 
pensive machines and other farm equipments, such as 



PHYSICAL RESOURCES OF THE COMMUNITY 19 

wider tired carriages. If it is a rolling country, it may- 
be necessary to completely change the system of agricult- 
ure from that practiced in a level country, because of the 
washing of the hillsides. Different kinds of drains are 
necessary, and great expense may be incurred from the 
overflow of water. This excess of precipitation may 
come at an unfortunate season of the year, and make 
difficult either the preparing of the fields, or the gather- 
ing of the crops. Soils may be fertile, the topography 
perfect from an agricultural standpoint, the temperature 
may be the most desirable throughout the year, but with 
too much precipitation, many difficulties arise. Muddy 
roads may make it necessary to have a larger number of 
schoolhouses because it is impracticable for the children 
to travel great distances. The fear of rain may make it 
necessary to have halls for social activities instead of 
outdoor picnics. Excessive rains may mean more expen- 
sive bridges across streams, more substantial founda- 
tions to buildings, and a greater outlay of time, effort, 
and money. 

Compare if you will a country community more for- 
tunately located. The precipitation is just sufficient 
for the needs of the various crops. It comes at the right 
seasons of the year. It falls in ample quantities for all 
purposes and yet not too much. The people of the 
community may spend their excess time in building 
magnificent homes, constructing efficient highways, 
and building better schools and churches. Because 
of good roads they may have consolidated schools and 



20 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

regular transportation for the children. These farmers 
are more prosperous with the same amount of effort 
and will have telephones and other means of communica- 
tion with the outside world. The library is known in a 
community of this kind, whereas it may be unknown 
in another community. 

Still another group of farmers may settle where precipi- 
tation is not sufficient, and where general farming is 
impossible without human aid in the supplying of water. 
Here the farmers must dig ditches, build flues, dig wells, 
and invest in pumps, engines, and storage reservoirs in 
order to secure and keep a supply of water sufficient for 
growing purposes, and after this is done they must give 
considerable attention and many hours of time to the 
work of regulating the supply. Naturally this reduces 
the amount of time which they have for other activities, 
and therefore it is more difficult to make the same prog- 
ress. Any attempt to make a rural survey without 
considering the relative status of a community with re- 
gard to rainfall must be a failure. It is very important 
that the subject of rainfall be studied in close relation- 
ship with the question of topography, since excessive 
water must be carried from the land and a deficiency 
must be supplied, and both of these must be largely 
affected by the natural slope of the surface. 

It is a significant fact which should be emphasized 
that in communities where drainage or irrigation is car- 
ried on, the farmers are able to operate much smaller 
areas of land, as a result of which they live much closer 



PHYSICAL RESOURCES OF THE COMMUNITY 21 

together. In a more densely populated rural community, 
social intercourse is more possible, educational activities 
are influenced, and the community as a whole feels the 
effects of the system under which they live. The stu- 
dent must not overlook these facts in comparing the 
status of the activities of farmers in the different com- 
munities. It must also be borne in mind that although 
the farmer who devotes much time to irrigating and 
draining his land may be as prosperous as the farmer 
who neither drains nor irrigates, by this extra labor 
in irrigating and draining, the farmer is much more 
able to accurately regulate the water supply and by 
intensive methods he produces larger crops and may be 
fully as prosperous. 

It is possible at the present time to secure from the 
Weather Bureau of the Department of Agriculture, at 
Washington, D.C., a very large amount of information 
concerning annual precipitation. That bureau has 
stations in all parts of the United States, and although 
it would not be possible to secure an exact statement 
for any individual county, it is possible to secure informa- 
tion for every part of the United States. Not only 
can one secure the average precipitation per year for a 
series of years, but it is possible to find the amount of 
rainfall as compared with the amount of snowfall, and 
this statement is available for each month in the year 
as well as for the entire year. It is easy, therefore, to 
prepare a statement for any community showing the 
average monthly precipitation. This can be correlated 



22 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

with the seasons and the stage of growth of the various 
crops. From these same reports it is possible to find 
out whether there are dry years and wet years and other 
uncertainties. By careful study of the data available 
for a period of years the student should be able to very 
readily pass judgment upon the desirability of any com- 
munity from the standpoint of precipitation. 

Temperature. — Extremes of heat and cold are as im- 
portant as extremes in the amount of rainfall or extremes 
in topography, or again extremes in the richness of soils. 
What boots it if the soil be rich, the country rolling or 
level, and the rainfall ideal, if the summers are so short 
that crops cannot mature, or if the winters are so cold 
that the country cannot be inhabited, or if though habi- 
table it is developed with great difficulty accompanied 
by great privations. Or again consider the difficulties 
if the summers are long and the days scorching hot and 
labor can be performed only with the greatest suffering 
to the one who performs physical labors. In some 
districts the temperature varies from the most extreme 
cold to the most extreme heat, necessitating very ex- 
pensive buildings and clothes and extraordinary expendi- 
tures for fuel in winter, at the same time requiring 
facilities for keeping the products of the farm from decay- 
ing in the extremely hot seasons. The people who must 
spend much time making warm clothes, building warm 
buildings, and seeking fuel for winter use or putting up 
ice, or otherwise caring for the products during the 
summer or in other ways providing against unfavorable 



PHYSICAL RESOURCES OF THE COMMUNITY 23 

climatic conditions, cannot make as much progress in 
developing desirable institutions, such as schools, as can 
those who live in a country where extremes of heat and 
cold are almost unknown, or where conditions are so 
nearly normal that time is available to do other things. 

Not only are extremes of heat and cold important but 
irregularities are of as great significance. A late spring 
frost may make impossible the production of fruit. 
It may likewise destroy growing crops and necessitate 
a second planting. A district which has to contend with 
this abnormal situation is handicapped. Likewise an 
early fall frost may result in frozen fruits, small crops 
of grain, and other destructions. It is necessary, there- 
fore, not only to make a study of the length of the seasons 
and the extremes of temperature but to make a study for 
a series of years of a number of conditions in order that 
judgment may be passed as to the general adaptability 
or favorableness of the district under consideration. 

Variations and uncertainties in temperature influence 
social activities and educational activities as much prob- 
ably as they affect the economic activities and the char- 
acter of agriculture. During the long cold winters 
in some northern sections of the United States, it is very 
difficult because of the very cold weather and the bliz- 
zards to get to school if the schools are far distant from 
the farms, and it is also difficult to get to church on 
Sundays at some seasons of the year ; likewise, to get 
to social gatherings in the evenings or during the day. 
It is especially difficult to plan ahead for meetings which 



24 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

are desired because of the uncertainties noted above. 
The people in those districts may not suffer greatly from 
the extreme cold or from the blizzards because they take 
the necessary precautions, but serious inconveniences 
come when plans are made ahead for specific events. 

Probably the character of play and recreation of a 
community is governed as much by the temperature as 
any other one feature. In a northern country the 
winter sports such as skating, skeeing, sleighing, snow- 
shoeing, ice-boating, etc., are possible only because of 
the cold weather. These are, therefore, impossible in 
the southern parts of the country. In the North for 
several months of the year other sports, such as basket 
ball and indoor games are extensively indulged in. 
Compared with these, indoor games, are almost unknown 
in the southern states. The Weather Bureau, referred 
to above, is now able to supply the most detailed informa- 
tion concerning the variations in temperature for various 
parts of the United States for a considerable number of 
years. 

Conclusions. — We have now briefly reviewed some of 
the more important characteristics of the physical re- 
sources of the country. A complete and comprehensive 
study of the subject would necessitate even greater 
detail than I have suggested above. An historical study 
of the geology would doubtless be valuable inasmuch as 
this would make possible a more complete report of the 
water supply and the structure of the soil. The student 
who has followed the subject this far will, however, be 



PHYSICAL RESOURCES OF THE COMMUNITY 25 

able to go into the subject as far as time, money, or in- 
clination permits. I have outlined here only four funda- 
mental factors which must necessarily in every case be 
taken into consideration before a satisfactory review 
of the rural conditions can be undertaken. These forces 
are fundamental in determining the status of the people 
in any rural community, and all the activities of 
the rural people are influenced by these important 
factors. Economic activities are almost controlled by 
them. The political beliefs and activities are materially 
influenced by the characteristics of nature. The social, 
ethical, aesthetic, educational, and other problems are 
greatly influenced by the physical environment. 

I have not undertaken in this chapter any discussion 
concerning the quantity of the physical resources. This 
quantity can be measured in terms of acres of land, 
tons of deposits, and value. All of these attempts to 
measure nature, however, presuppose the presence of 
the human factor. Before taking up this phase of the 
subject, therefore, it will be necessary to briefly survey 
the human resources of the community. After we have 
done this, we may take up the activities of the people. 
First of all comes the economic activities or the struggle 
of the human resources with the physical resources. 
After this the other activities may be considered more 
intelligently. 

J. L. C. 



26 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

SURVEY OF THE PHYSICAL RESOURCES OF THE COM- 
MUNITY 

i. In what ways do these general physical characteristics limit 
the agricultural productiveness of your community? To what 
extent are the natural resources of the community developed? 
What are the actual resources of your community? 

2. What mineral resources has the community? Are these 
being properly developed and conserved ? Is there any exploita- 
tion of these resources ? Whose fault is it if these recources are 
not being properly utilized for the welfare of the community? 

3. What are the community's timber resources? Are these 
resources being properly used and conserved ? What is the com- 
munity's attitude toward conserving its resources ? Is anything 
being done toward reforestation ? 

4. What are the soil resources of your community ? Have you 
a soil chart, or is such a chart obtainable ? Is there any one in the 
community who could work out such a chart ? Are the schools 
of the community doing anything to develop interest in the soils 
of the community ? Is there a clear comprehension on the part 
of the farmers of the relations of soil to crops and the need of 
rotation? Are the fields of the community being destroyed by 
erosion of any kind ? Is the soil growing in fertility or decreasing ? 

5. What are the sources of supply of the meats used by the com- 
munity ? Of the fruits ? Of the cereals ? Of the potatoes and 
other like vegetables? To what extent are the soil resources of 
the community being properly developed by means of the most 
appropriate kinds of plants or animals ? To what extent are the 
schools of the community helping to develop an intelligent appre- 
ciation of the resources of the community and the possible lines 
of production within the community? 

6. To what extent can new resources be developed within the 
community ? What latent resources has the community ? What 
possibilities for irrigation or for draining ? What chance of adding 



PHYSICAL RESOURCES OF THE COMMUNITY 27 

new agricultural fields by the use of fertilizers ? Has any farmer 
in the community applied chemistry to the determination of his 
soil problems? Would "book farming" be rejected by the 
farmers of the community ? 

7. To what extent does the community work up its own raw 
materials into manufactured products? What are the manu- 
facturing interests of the community? Are these being run 
profitably ? Are other manufacturing establishments possible ? 
Are any natural resources being wasted ? To what extent is the 
community sufficient within itself for its own necessary supplies ? 
What part of the community's living is produced by itself ? 
Where does it secure the remainder? Are there any essential 
reasons for these facts ? To what extent do the schools of the 
community share in the whole problem of the development and 
conservation of the physical resources of the community ? What, 
if anything, is being done by the schools to help the boys and 
girls appreciate the physical wealth of the community ? 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Hunt. How to Choose a Farm. 

Taylor, H. C. Agricultural Economics. (New York, 1905.) 
Burkett, C. W. Agriculture for Beginners. (Boston, 1904.) 
Hatch, K. L. Simple Exercises Illustrating Some Applications of 

Chemistry to Agriculture. (Washington, 1908.) 
Hopkins, C. G. Soil Fertility and Permanent Agriculture. (Bos- 
ton, 1910.) 
James, C. C. Practical Agriculture. (New York, 1902.) 
Quaintance, H. W. The Influence of Farm Machinery on Pro- 
duction and Labor. (New York, 1904.) 
Bruce, Robert. Food Supply. (London, 1908.) 
Edgar, W. C. The Story of a Grain of Wheat. (New York, 1903.) 
Allen, W. F. Agriculture in the Middle Ages. 
Duclaux, Mme. The Fields of France. (London, 1904.) 



28 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

Dun, Finlay. American Farming and Food. (London, 1881.) 
Streeter, J. W. The Fat of the Land. (New York, 1904.) 
Marlatt, G. L. The Annual Losses Occasioned by Destructive In- 
sects in the United States, Yearbook of the Department of Agricul- 
ture, p. 46. (1904.) 
Conn, H. W. Agricultural Bacteriology. (Philadelphia, 190 i.) 
Newell, F. H. Irrigation in the United States. (New York, 

1902). The Reclamation of the West. (Washington, 1903.) 
Spillman, W. J. Diversified Farming in the Cotton Belt, Yearbook 
of the Department of Agriculture, p. 193 (1905) ; Opportunities 
in Agriculture, Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture, p. 181 
(1904). 
Terry, T. B. Our Farming, or How We Made a Run-down Farm 
Bring Both Profit and Pleasure. (Philadelphia, 1893.) 



CHAPTER III 
HUMAN RESOURCES OF THE COMMUNITY 

Any region must have some elements of human society 
before it can properly be called a community. The 
diversity and complexity of these human elements may 
be almost infinitely varied. It is not proper perhaps to 
speak of the life of a hermit, remote from his fellow men, 
as being a community life, though even with him there 
is a certain inner social life from which he cannot wholly 
escape. It is perhaps hardly proper to speak of a great 
city, with its complex and thronging interests, as a com- 
munity, for it is not a common life. But in the average 
agricultural region, or in the small town or village, there 
is enough of the human element to set up radiating lines 
of interest, and a sufficiently small degree of complexity 
to make possible at least a common life for all the mem- 
bers. But there are worlds of difference between vary- 
ing communities, due almost wholly to the varying types 
and qualities of the individuals who make up the com- 
munities. 

There are communities in which the dominant type 
of individual is wholly traditional, settled in his ways 
and unprogressive. Here the children lack stimulus to 
preparation for life or work ; here community develop- 

29 



30 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

ment lags or decays. There is perhaps nothing sadder 
in the world than the sight of a village once prosperous 
and progressive that has fallen into stagnation and decay. 
The inner experience of a child who grows up in such 
a community must be pathetic, for he has a constant con- 
tact with, and his life is molded by, the influences that 
speak of failure rather than of progress. For such a 
child there is little future other than that of discourage- 
ment unless he should, by some means, be released both 
socially and psychologically from these decadent in- 
fluences. 

On the other hand, there is nothing more stimulating 
than the sight of a community that has been developing 
naturally and healthfully in a consistent progress. Here 
industry calls forth the constructive energies of all the 
people, old and young. The sense of workmanship and 
the mastering of the materials of the community give 
to all a certain air of self-respect that makes them com- 
mand respect. Here surplus energies will expand them- 
selves in recreative, social, and cultural ways, and the 
whole life of the community will be enlarged. 

But what are these human resources? First, every 
community must have its workers ; but as a matter of 
fact in some measure every individual in the community 
must be a contributor to the wealth and welfare, material 
or social, of the community. Every individual will be 
a consumer of the goods of the community, and the 
social conscience of our times is coming to insist that he 
who consumes the goods of the community shall render 



HUMAN RESOURCES OF THE COMMUNITY 3 1 

some essential social return for the share which the 
community gives him in its life. But work should be of a 
sufficiently varied kind within the community, and the 
workers should be sufficiently varied in their skills, so 
that the community will not present itself as a monotone 
of work or of activity. Where variety of work and 
skill is impossible, there should be an extension of the 
bounds of the community consciousness to include other 
fragmentary communities; for the conscience of the 
community must become complete enough to provide 
the types and varieties of activity that are valued by all 
and that are necessary to a completely human life. Such 
extension of community consciousness is, even in very 
sparsely settled regions, very possible in these days 
by means of telephone lines, good roads, the use of auto- 
mobiles, and the extension of the mail service to wide 
territories. 

Social leaders should not be content to allow isolated 
fragments of a world to decay and die in their fragmen- 
tariness. They must be aroused and stimulated to en- 
large their borders, at least in terms of interest and work, 
until within themselves they shall be more inclusive of 
a completely human world. 

But work itself should be understood to include all 
forms of constructive and productive activity. The 
fundamental industries of agriculture, lumbering, fishing, 
mining, the raising of stock, and like activities, which 
produce the first raw materials of social wealth are to 
be considered as essential parts of the community's 



32 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

activity, and there must be human energy enough to 
develop gradually and bring to complete use the resources 
along any of these lines of which the community has 
store. There will be reflex influences. " We mold 
ourselves and our materials at the same time," says an 
old proverb quoted by Comenius ; and the workers 
of a community, increasing their material wealth, are 
increasing their human wealth at the same time. 

But beyond these forms of work are those secondary 
means of production, — the manufacturing, the re- 
making of the raw materials until they shall meet more 
fully the growing tastes of the community ; — and here 
again the aptitude grows by what it feeds upon ; and if 
worthy materials are being made in worthy manner 
into still more worthy materials for the markets of the 
world, the skills and the tastes of the community will 
be gradually developing and a finer life will be the result. 

Beyond these will rise the essentially social occupations 
of the professional men and women, occupations that 
have come into existence only with the growth of com- 
munity life. The lawyer was unnecessary in the sim- 
pler world ; the teacher as such was unknown ; the priest 
was a worker of wonders for the baffling of the credulous ; 
and the physician has come to be of immense social 
importance in our modern world because so many of 
our diseases are really social in their origin and nature. 

Perhaps the great task of the world is the conserva- 
tion of our human resources. We have grown so accus- 
tomed to academic ways of looking at things that it 



HUMAN RESOURCES OF THE COMMUNITY 33 

seems difficult to face the essential facts of human life. 
We would conserve our community intelligence by cram- 
ming it into the heads of our boys and girls in the 
schools ; we would conserve our community moral life 
by reducing it to maxims and precepts and feeding our 
boys and girls upon these dry remnants of morality ; we 
would conserve the political life of our communities by 
intrusting that life to the tender mercies of the most 
efficient manipulator of money and men. Meanwhile 
the community is burying its dead, one by one ; and 
rejoicing again and again in the birth of new members ; 
and although the community does not always recognize 
the fact, the real promise of the future is not in the com- 
munity's old and set forms, and in its methods of con- 
servation, but in the ever renewing life that comes in the 
birth of the little child. Nothing more completely ex- 
presses the right principle of community conservation 
of its human resources than the great child- welfare 
movement of the present. 

It startles us to meet the proposition that a child is 
more socially important than an adult ; but the old 
Greek king understood the fact when he said that he 
would willingly send a hundred men to be sacrificed 
rather than one child ; for men have proved their value 
and have given the testimony of the worth of their con- 
tribution ; but in the child there may be latent the 
energy that will open a new era in the world's history. 
He who sacrifices a man knows what he is doing ; but 
he who sacrifices a child knows not what social wealth 



34 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

he may be wasting, what social poverty he may be bring- 
ing upon the world. In every community of normal size 
there are boys and girls, young men and young women, 
not yet able completely to express themselves, still facing 
in some measure the larger revelation of the future. We 
shall make our communities richer in resource, and finer 
centers of life, just in so far as we are able to conserve 
these unknown human resources, these makers of the 
social world that is to be in the next generation, these 
energies that are eager to seize the tools of life and take 
their places in the constructive work of the world. 

An essential element in the progress of any community 
is the native energy, the moral daring, that sometimes 
goes astray, in its young men and women. When the 
world has lost its savor and the life of the community 
seems to languish toward decay, the honor that is in 
some young man or woman, the strength that surges up 
out of some ancestral deep, the faith that can dare, 
even with the possibility of failure, these are the things 
that may even yet assure a future to that community. 
The inventive genius of the boy as he seeks to imitate or 
surpass the man he reads about, the spirit of inquiry, 
the power of sacrifice, the strength that can meet the 
uncertainties of the life of any community, these things 
everywhere present in some degree, are a part, — an 
essential part, — of the future possibilities of any com- 
munity. 

It is not likely that any community fully realizes its 
own resources. There is more intelligence in its members 



HUMAN RESOURCES OF THE COMMUNITY 35 

than they give each other credit for ; there is more 
willingness to help each other ; there is less of actual 
suspicion of each other than appears on the surface. 
He who would go into a community to serve that com- 
munity as teacher, minister, or physician in any sense, 
must not forget that his first duty is to investigate and 
understand the resources that are there before him. It is 
his duty, — not to destroy those resources and attempt 
to develop others ; it is his business to understand and 
to cultivate the resources that are there. 

J. K. H. 

SURVEY OF THE HUMAN RESOURCES OF THE COM- 
MUNITY 

1. What is the popuation of the community? How is this 
population distributed as to children and adults ? Are the ele- 
ments which make up this population evenly balanced ? Are 
there any large numbers of unattached men or women in the 
community ? Are there any unprotected or improperly directed 
children in the community ? Are there any essentially vicious 
forces in the community ? 

2. Is there a conservation of strength and energy in the condi- 
tion of labor in the community ? Is there a proper development 
of the occupational possibilities of the community ? Is there any 
waste of child life or adult life through antiquated or anti-social 
forms of industry ? Is there any tendency in the community to 
disregard the values of home life or social life for the children ? 

3. Are there any essentially strong leaders of the community 
life ? Are any efforts made to discover and develop the latent 
talents of boys and girls in the community? Are these efforts 
ever overdone ? Has the community sent any men or women out 



36 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

into the world to win a place in the world's work? Has the 
community any memories or traditions of an heroic past that 
may help to develop such attitudes in the children? Is the 
community intelligent in its efforts to conserve and develop its 
child life ? Has the community any vital ideals of future develop- 
ment and of future greatness? To what extent may it be said 
that the community is depending upon its own resources of 
strength and energy, and to what extent is it depending upon 
external help for its development ? Are there any latent human 
resources in the way of intelligence, skill, or taste that are not 
properly appreciated or properly developed within the community ? 
Are the teachers in the public schools interested in the com- 
munity's human resources, or merely in the books ? Are the minis- 
ters in the churches interested in these community resources ? 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Anderson. The Country Town. 

Butterfield. Chapters in Rural Progress. 

Carnegie. Triumphant Democracy. (Later edition.) 

Commons. Races and Immigrants in America. 

Giddings. Inductive Sociology. 

Hasbach. History of English Agricultural Labor. 

Martin. History of the Grange Movement. 

Meline. The Return to the Land. 

Emerick, C. F. Agricultural Discontent, Political Science Quarterly, 

Vol. IX, p. 436. 
Fairchild, George T. Rural Wealth and Welfare. (New York, 

1900.) 
Haggard, H. Rider. A Farmer's Year. (London, 1899.) 
Kelsey, Carl. The Negro Farmer. 
Harwood, W. S. The New Earth. (New York, 1906.) 
Chilcot, E. C. Dry Land Farming in the Great Plains Area, 
Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture, p. 451. (1907.) 



HUMAN RESOURCES OF THE COMMUNITY 37 

Collins, T. B. The New Agriculture. (New York, 1906.) 
Hall, Bolton. A Little Land and a Living. (New York, 1908.) 

Three Acres and Liberty. (New York, 1907.) 
Maxwell, G. H. The Homecrofters. 
Moore, H. E. Back to the Land. (London, 1893.) 



CHAPTER IV 
ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES OF THE COMMUNITY 

Introductory. — We have now reviewed briefly some 
of the important problems which must be considered 
on account of the variations in the physical resources 
of the community. We have also briefly surveyed the 
problems confronting us in connection with the human 
resources of the community. It is natural that the next 
subject to be investigated should be the economic ac- 
tivities of the community. It has often been said and 
well said that the majority of man's time is devoted to 
making a living. The economic activities surely call for 
most of the time of the people of any community. In 
order to best consider the problems involved in a typical 
rural community, I have chosen to keep in mind a repre- 
sentative section which is not peculiar in any way, but 
which I believe to be typical for purposes of study. 

I have in mind a considerable community in north- 
west Georgia. I am not better acquainted with condi- 
tions in that community than with similar communities 
in any other part of the United States. My observations 
here are based upon information gleaned from studying 
rural conditions from a distance, — not from first-hand 
study. I should make it clear that I have passed 

38 



ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES OF THE COMMUNITY 39 

through this community several times and have stopped 
in it, but I have done the same with thousands of other 
communities in much the same way. I, therefore, am 
acquainted with the general characteristics of the dis- 
trict and the general rural status. 

Land in Farms. — The community under considera- 
tion, for purposes of this discussion, will be presumed 
to extend over an entire county. The area of this county 
is almost exactly 320,000 acres. The most casual reader 
should at once see that this is 500 sections of land. If 
this community were in the central west and were divided 
into the usual quarter-section farms, the reader would 
conclude at once that the community is settled by ap- 
proximately 2000 farmers, each operating the usual 
quarter section. This, however, is not the situation. 

Size of Farms. — It is of foremost importance that we 
should inquire at this point concerning the size of these 
farms. I suggested that if this were a typical community 
in the north central states we might expect to find these 
farms, generally speaking, 160 acres in size. A few 
would be 80 or 1 20 acres in size, and a few would be 200 
or 240 acres in size, but the typical farm would be the 
160-acre place. How different is this rural community 
in the South ! We find one suburban place under three 
acres reported as a farm and supporting a farm family. 
Then there are seventy-seven places between three and 
ten acres in size. These again are small suburban places, 
largely devoted to the production of vegetables, poultry, 
dairying, etc., but they support farm families. After 



40 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

these we find 266 farms to be between ten and twenty- 
acres in size. These are real farms in the modern sense 
of the word. Evidently they are small farms. In many 
parts of the country they would be looked upon as being 
extremely small farms. The question would be raised 
whether or not they could support farm families. Clearly 
under the usual system of farming the farmers could 
not make any large amount of money and would have 
to live in comparatively small homes and live compara- 
tively simple lives. There are nn farms between 
twenty and fifty acres in size. This is the largest single 
class and represents a very important group. Following 
this class in importance, we find 825 farms ranging from 
fifty to 100 acres in size. This would seem to be more 
nearly the size of farm which might well be advocated 
for general agricultural purposes, and yet it is clear that 
there are more of the forty-acre farms than of the eighty- 
acre farms. We may now turn our attention to the 
larger places. There are 530 farms which range from 
100 to 175 acres. This probably represents the class 
of quarter-section farms common in other parts of the 
country. Then there are 151 farms ranging from 175 
to 260 acres ; and 99 farms ranging between 260 and 
500 acres. It will be noted at once that the number of 
farms between 260 and 500 acres is only slightly larger 
than the number between three and ten acres. There 
are a few real large places in the county. The number 
between 500 and 1000 acres is 29, and those exceeding 
1000 acres number three. 



ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES OF THE COMMUNITY 41 

How different is the situation in the rural community 
under consideration from the rural community of the 
same size in the prairie region of the northwest. Here 
we have farms ranging from three to 1000 acres and over, 
— small farmers living in the most humble way to pros- 
perous farmers maintaining large establishments. It is 
proper to note here that the average size of farm for the 
entire community is about eighty-two acres, and it must 
be clear to any reasoning person that this does not mean 
that the farmers have anything like the same amount 
of property, or that the eighty-acre farm predominates. 

It might be noted also that the average number of acres 
of improved land per farm is almost exactly forty, but 
this does not mean that each farm family operates forty 
acres. The fact is, great numbers of farm families 
operate only five, ten, fifteen, or twenty acres of im- 
proved land, while many other farmers operate much 
larger tracts with the assistance of their families and 
hired labor. 

Growth. — The number of farmers in this community 
is increasing at the present time, and the question natu- 
rally would arise, " Does this mean that farms are 
growing smaller," or " Is there a considerable amount of 
unoccupied land which is now being taken up ? " Suffice 
it to say that even at the present time, slightly less than 
eighty acres out of every 100 acres of land in the county 
are in farms. This does not mean that the district 
is new or unsettled, and it certainly does not mean that 
there is government land available for settlement. It 



42 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

means only that there is considerable rough land not 
available for agriculture. It means that there are a 
number of railroad right-of-ways which take considerable 
land. It means that one city of some 14,000 inhabitants 
occupies a considerable tract of land, and it means 
further that roads occupy some space. Aside from these 
and sites for country schools, churches, etc., the land 
reported as not in farms is owned by absentees, is not in 
use, and is not reported as farm land. This is probably 
largely timbered and not readily available at the present 
time for farming purposes. There is room for some 
expansion and some increase in the amount of land 
actually in farms and the increase is actually going on. 
In 1900 there were 246,508 acres in farms, whereas in 
1 9 10 the land in farms had increased to 252,146 acres, — 
an increase of nearly 6000 acres. 

Land Improved. — But all land in farms is not im- 
proved. That is to say, all of the farm land is not actu- 
ally cultivated or preserved in good form for pastures 
in rotation. Indeed, a very large part of the land in 
farms is woodland, or if cleared, is not improved or used 
at the present time for cultivation. I noted above that 
whereas the average farm was about 82 acres in size, 
the average acreage of improved land per farm amounted 
to only forty acres. It should not surprise the reader, 
therefore, when I state that of the land in farms, only 
48 per cent is improved. In other words, slightly less 
than one half of the land actually in farms is improved 
and available for cultivation. It might be worth while 



ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES OF THE COMMUNITY 43 

to note, however, that the acreage of improved land is 
increasing. This is an evidence of thrift and work 
on the part of the agricultural class. Farmers are clearly 
not content with producing crops year after year on the 
same land and are increasing the acreage of land avail- 
able for cultivation. This is a sign of progress. The 
1900 reports show that there were 110,420 acres of im- 
proved land in the community under consideration, 
whereas the report for 1910 shows 121,382 acres. This 
is an increase of considerably more than 10,000 acres in 
ten years. But even this is comparatively slow progress 
when we consider the fact that in this county there are 
121,792 acres of woodland in farms. Much of this clearly 
could be improved if proper steps were taken. In addi- 
tion to this there are in farms almost 9000 acres of land 
not grown up with timber but not improved. This 
may be stump land, or stony land, or swamp land, or 
in some other way not available at the present time for 
agriculture. None the less, this must gradually be 
brought into use. 

Farm Labor. — I called attention to the fact that there 
are in the county a considerable number of places ex- 
ceeding 100 acres in size The actual number is 812. 
It is reasonable to believe that the farmers who operate 
these places are unable to do all of the work required. 
It is also reasonable to believe that a considerable number 
of farmers who have places from 50 to 100 acres would 
require some hired assistance during the working year. 
Each farmer in the community was asked whether or 



44 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

not he employed any laborers during the preceding year, 
and 948 reported that they had the assistance of outside 
labor at some time during the year. This is almost one 
half of the farmers in the county. All of these, how- 
ever, did not employ regular laborers to serve through- 
out the year. This is clear from the statement that 
the total amount expended for labor during one year 
amounted to $99,304. This is an expenditure of slightly 
more than $100 per farmer for those who hired labor, and 
clearly would not pay for a laborer more than half a 
year on the average. Large numbers of these farmers 
hired laborers only for a very few days, while others 
hired laborers for the entire year. In addition to the 
amount paid out in cash, these same farmers reported an 
expenditure of approximately $11,000 for rent and board 
furnished to laborers. 

Value of Farm Property. — The average citizen, be he 
a student or other interested party, does not realize 
how much is invested in farm property in such a commu- 
nity as I have under consideration. The farmers in the 
county referred to were asked concerning the value of 
farm property under their charge, and the total value 
for the county is shown to be almost $6,000,000. The 
farmers in this same district were asked in 1900 concern- 
ing the value of their property, and reported at that time 
that it amounted to slightly more than $3,500,000. 
The increase in the value of farm property, therefore, 
during the ten years exceeded 68 per cent, and amounted 
to almost $2,500,000. Some students will say at once 



ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES OF THE COMMUNITY 45 

that this is unearned increment, and that the property 
is the same as ten years ago, but I believe it is worth 
while to call attention to the fact that an increase of 
10,000 acres in improved land necessarily called for a 
large amount of labor, and the property improved now 
is much more valuable. It is also true that the land 
which formerly was improved is doubtless much better 
improved than it was. There are fences, ditches, and 
drains ; there are more and better buildings ; there are 
more and better animals on the farms ; there are more 
and better implements and machinery. All of these 
have added to the farm worth, and an increase amount- 
ing to a quarter of a million a year during the last ten 
years is an item which cannot be passed over lightly. 

Of the total value of farm property, $3,472,000 repre- 
sents the land alone. This is almost 60 per cent of the 
total value. The next item in importance is the value 
of the buildings, amounting to $1,264,000, or almost 
22 per cent of the total value. The buildings on the 
farms in this community have doubled in value in the 
last ten years. Live stock on farms is valued at almost 
$900,000, whereas ten years ago the total value of live 
stock on farms was less than $500,000. Live stock rep- 
resented 15 per cent of the value of farm property. Im- 
plements and machinery have doubled in value during 
the decade, and although only 5 per cent of the value of 
all farm property they are reported to be worth over 
$271,000. 

The figures given above are very large, and many 



46 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

readers do not like large terms. It is worth while to 
note, therefore, that the average value of land per acre 
is $13.77 according to the answers given by the 3000 
farmers interviewed. The average value reported ten 
years ago was $9.09 per acre, showing a very material 
increase during the last decade. The actual increase 
when figured in dollars and cents amounts to almost 
fifty cents an acre during each year. This should be 
kept in mind by present owners, and also should be kept 
in mind by present tenants who hope to become owners. 
The value of the average farm with all of its equipment 
is slightly less than $2000. Of course this must necessa- 
rily vary according to the size of the farm and the extent 
to which the farm is improved. The average value of 
buildings per farm for the entire county slightly exceeds 
$400. This includes the houses and other buildings, 
and seems very low, but it must be remembered that a 
very large number of small and very poor sets of buildings 
are included, offsetting the higher average value of 
buildings reported for many farms. The average value 
of implements and machinery per farm for the entire 
community is only $90. This again is extremely small, 
but shows that a very large amount of the labor must be 
performed by the farmers themselves rather than by 
machines guided by laborers. 

Live Stock on Farms. — The live stock industry has 
attained considerable importance among the farmers 
of the community under consideration. This is evi- 
denced by the fact that all but 89 of the farmers reported 



ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES OF THE COMMUNITY 47 

domestic animals of some kind. Those who did not 
report any domestic animals were small suburban vege- 
table growers and poultry raisers. There were also a 
few tenants who did not have any animals on their farms, 
but who were supplied animals by the owners of the land. 
The total value of these domestic animals was $868,000 
in round numbers. This is a very important item in 
agriculture, and is of increasing importance. The 
average value of live stock per farm for the entire com- 
munity is almost $300. This is very materially above 
the average for ten years ago, when it amounted to 
about $150. The growth of the live stock industry only 
means much for the community. The most important 
class of domestic animals reported is mules. The num- 
ber reported was 3673. This is an average of somewhat 
more than one mule per farm for all farmers in the dis- 
trict. Of course all farmers did not have mules, and 
several had two mules or more. The most striking 
feature of the report pertaining to mules is the fact that 
only 23 yearling mules were reported. It is perfectly 
clear from this that the farmers of Georgia, especially 
the farmers of the community under consideration, 
do not raise their own mules. If I were called upon 
to point out the greatest errors committed by the 
farmers of this community I would point out this as one 
of them. Only fifteen spring mule colts were reported. 
It is a striking fact that the average value of the mature 
mules for the state of Georgia is almost exactly $150. 
The average value of the yearling mule colt is almost 



48 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

$75, and the average value of the spring colt is $40. 
Here is the point which I desire to emphasize! There 
are sixty-four farmers out of every 100 who report 
mules on their farms, and yet only one farmer out of 
every 1000 who reports spring mule colts. Less than 
one out of every 150 farmers had on their places any 
colts. These animals are produced in other parts of the 
country when they could be raised to very great advan- 
tage on the farms which need them. It is extremely un- 
fortunate that these farmers do not attempt to raise 
their own work animals. 

There are almost one half as many horses in the com- 
munity as there are mules, and about one half as many 
farmers report horses as report mules. The average 
value of the horse is slightly lower than that of the mule. 
Here again the same striking - situation exists. Only 
fifty-five yearling horse colts were reported from the 
entire county. Here is evidence enough that the farmers 
purchase not only mules but horses to carry on their 
work. This is an exorbitant drain on the community. 

There were reported in the county about 9000 cattle. 
This is an average of approximately three cattle for each 
farmer in the community. When we take into consid- 
eration the fact that half of the land in farms is wood- 
land or otherwise unimproved, and think of the amount 
of wild pasturage available, it is strange that there are not 
more cattle of all kinds. One half of the cattle are dairy 
cows, the others being distributed among the various 
classes of steers, bulls, calves, and heifers. It is inter- 



ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES OF THE COMMUNITY 49 

esting to note that the average value of the dairy cows is 
slightly more than $20. All other classes of animals fall 
materially below this. Three out of every four farmers 
in Georgia have swine on their farms. In the community 
under consideration, 7000 swine were reported at the time 
of the last census. This leaves a very low average 
number of swine for each farmer, the average being three 
or four. It would seem that great opportunities present 
themselves at the present time looking toward the 
development of the swine industry. Climatic conditions 
are favorable. The production of corn is practicable 
and more or less common, and the prices paid for pork 
are very high. Indeed, at the present time, the produc- 
tion of meat is an important industry which should not 
be overlooked, and this particular branch is especially 
profitable at the present time. 

The total number of sheep owned by these 3000 farmers 
is only about 1000. Clearly the farmers are not at the 
present time largely engaged in the sheep industry. 
It may be noted that only about two farmers of every 
100 had sheep. It would seem that with the present 
high price of wool and the high price of mutton and lamb, 
and the general demand for other products of the sheep 
industry, that farmers would undertake the production 
of sheep more generally if land were available for that 
purpose. In the community of which I write, there 
are large tracts of land used little or not at all at the 
present time. These lands might well be utilized to 
advantage in the extension of the sheep and goat indus- 



50 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

try. This may call for more vigilance in seeking out 
wild animals which prey upon the lambs and kids. It 
would require discrimination in the ownership of dogs ; 
it would require more and better fences ; and it seems 
reasonable to believe that the demands at the present 
time are such as to warrant these changes. 

Turning our attention now towards one of the minor 
branches of the live stock industry, but none the less a 
branch which the farmers cannot afford to overlook, I 
desire to call attention to the status of poultry produc- 
tion at the present time. I find that 84 farmers out of 
every 100, covering the entire state of Georgia, have 
chickens. In the particular community under con- 
sideration, about the same proportion exists. About 
eight farmers out of every 100 have turkeys ; six have 
geese; seven have guinea-fowls; and three have ducks. 
Only a very, very few have pigeons and pea-fowls. 
These 3000 farmers have on their farms almost 70,000 
fowls in the spring of the year. This is the basis of their 
activities during the coming summer. The total value 
of these fowls is nearly $30,000 or $10 a farm. Of course 
many farmers have considerably more than $10 worth 
of fowls, and many have much less than this. During 
an average year, four out of every five farmers raise a 
considerable number of chickens. The total production 
of fowls on the farms in this community during a typical 
year is approximately 175,000. This is nearly sixty 
fowls per farm. The total value of the fowls produced 
amounts to more than $50,000, or between $15 and $20 



ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES OF THE COMMUNITY 5 1 

per farm. It is my thorough belief that in this commu- 
nity, farmers should raise three or four times as many 
fowls, and should have an income from this industry 
alone many times what they have now. 

Only 1052 farmers sold fowls of any kind during the 
year 1909. Thus, only one farmer out of three had a 
yearly revenue from the sale of chickens. These thou- 
sand farmers sold an average of forty chickens each, 
and derived a revenue of a little more than $11.50 from 
this source. If they had sold four times this many and 
had an average revenue of $50 per farm, they would 
have reached a more reasonable stage of development. 

Turning attention now to the production and sale of 
eggs by the farmers in this community, 250,000 dozens 
of eggs were produced during one year. These were 
valued at about $50,000. With the increase in the 
production of fowls, there would be an increase in the 
production of eggs, and in a community of this sort there 
should be a production of at least a million dozens, 
with a value of $200,000. A larger number of farmers 
sold eggs than sold chickens. The number who re- 
ported the sale of eggs during one year was 1280, and 
they reported the sale of 90,000 dozens of eggs with an 
income from this source of $18,000. From this it will 
be seen that the average dozen of eggs was sold for 
twenty cents. From the above statement it will be seen 
that the 3000 farmers in the community produced poultry 
and eggs valued at more than $100,000, and sold a little 
more than one fourth of what they produced. From 



52 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

this it will be seen that the production of poultry and eggs 
was largely for home consumption, and only about one 
third of the farmers sold any of these productions. 
Those who did sell had an income from poultry and eggs 
very close to $30 each. If these farmers would organize 
a selling society and would double their production they 
could afford to employ a selling agent throughout the 
year. At the present time, their sales amount to $30,000 
for poultry and eggs. If this were doubled and they sold 
$60,000 worth they could pay a very good salary to a 
satisfactory agent. One per cent of $60,000 is $600, 
or $50 a month. Dealers at the present time expect 
to make from 5 to 10 per cent, and many do not stop 
short of 15 or 20 per cent. 

Farm Crops. — In the state of Georgia, nine farmers 
out of every ten produce some corn. These farmers have 
an average of from twelve to fifteen acres per farm. 
This is evidence of the fact that corn can be grown and 
indeed corn is grown to a considerable extent in that 
state. In the community of which I write, corn is grown 
successfully. The total acreage in an average year 
exceeds 27,000. The farmers have an average of ten 
acres of corn each, but the production is not high, — • 
the average being probably from twelve to fifteen bushels 
per acre. There is evidence, however, that corn produc- 
tion is possible and is grown quite generally throughout 
the district. There is evidence also that the soils are 
badly worn and need careful attention. Of the 3092 
farmers in the community, I find that 2367 purchase 



ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES OF THE COMMUNITY 53 

commercial fertilizers. They spend on an average of 
almost $100,000 a year, or $30 each. There is something 
wrong with this system of agriculture. If the farmers 
must purchase fertilizers, they should all join hands and 
form a purchasing society. They should purchase by 
the carload lot, and should save as much as possible in 
this way. They should get the best expert advice as 
to the value of the fertilizer which they are purchasing. 
They should know that much of the fertilizer which they 
are purchasing is practically useless. But these farmers 
should not spend $100,000 a year for commercial fer- 
tilizer. With live-stock products so high, they should 
go into raising of animals of all sorts. This would re- 
sult in the demand for more pasture. This calls for more 
hay and forage. This in turn calls for the production of 
more natural fertilizer which in turn enriches the soil. 
The income would be greater because of the possibilities 
of the live-stock industry at the present time. Lands 
would be enriched and larger crops would be grown ; other 
products would result, and at the same time the farmers 
would save this $100,000 which now goes for fertilizers. 
Purchase of Feed. — At the present time, the farmers 
in the community under consideration do not produce 
enough feed for the live stock which they have, and 
therefore attention must necessarily be directed towards 
this subject. About one farmer out of every four pur- 
chases feed, and the amount expended for feed during 
one year is about $50,000. Of course steps should be 
taken as rapidly as possible to remedy this. 



54 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

Selling of Feed. — It should be noted, however, in 
contrast to the above statements that a considerable 
number of farmers sell feed. The total receipts from sale 
of feed during the same year, however, was only about 
one half the amount paid out for feed. I find that 185 
out of 3092 farmers sold corn. They disposed of 14,377 
bushels and received for it $13,521. This is almost a 
dollar a bushel and must be a very profitable crop at 
this price. Only fifty-two farmers sold oats. These 
sold 8316 bushels and received $7466. This is nearly 
90 cents a bushel, and is again a very good price. Hay 
and coarse forage of some kind was sold by forty-four 
farmers. They sold 339 tons and received $6040. This 
is a very high price, considering the possibilities of 
production. It will be seen at once that a very small 
number of farmers produced more feed than they used, 
while a very large number used more feed than they pro- 
duced, and if the farmers raised as many domestic 
animals of the different classes as they should the produc- 
tion of feed would have to be increased very materially. 

Turning attention now to the hay and forage crop, it 
is interesting to note that only 45,000 farmers out of 
290,000 in the state of Georgia produce hay and forage 
of any kind. In 1909, they devoted 253,000 acres to 
hay and forage, an average of between five and six 
acres per farm reporting. In the community to which 
I refer, the farmers devoted 5471 acres to hay and forage 
crops, and received in return 5605 tons which is a little 
more than one ton per acre. A very large number of 



ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES OF THE COMMUNITY 55 

farmers did not have any hay or forage crop. Grain cut 
green was the largest individual forage crop, and after 
this came a group of various tame and cultivated grasses. 
It would seem that much more time, land, and attention 
should be devoted to these crops. In addition to 27,000 
acres devoted to corn, there were something more than 
4000 acres devoted to oats. Less than 800 acres were 
devoted to wheat. Some of the farmers produced dry 
peas and a few produced peanuts. The total production 
of sweet potatoes was about 400 acres, yielding 35,000 
bushels. This is a yield of about ninety bushels to the 
acre, and demonstrates clearly that the production of 
sweet potatoes is economic and advantageous. The 
reports show that 38,000 acres were devoted to cotton 
and 14,000 bales were produced. 

Fruit Production. — Apples are grown much more 
extensively in Georgia than is generally supposed. In 
the entire state, 62,000 farmers, or nearly one out of 
every four, have apple trees of bearing age. Further 
than this, many farmers are setting out apple trees, and 
at the present time there are more than 27,000 farmers 
who have apple trees not yet of bearing age. This is one 
out of every ten farmers. In the community to which I 
am referring, 845 of the 3092 farmers reported apple 
trees, and the average number per farm is almost 100. 
It is evident from this that almost one third of the 
farmers have apple trees, and they have on an average 
more than an acre devoted to this particular fruit. Also, 
358 farmers have trees not yet of bearing age and have 



56 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

an average of almost sixty young trees per farm. It is 
perfectly clear from this that the farmers are interested 
in the production of apples. There is need for a society 
for the marketing of apples, or the manufacturing of 
cider and vinegar, or for the drying, preserving, and 
canning of the fruit. The individual farmer cannot 
handle his crop to advantage but must join with his 
neighbors who are interested in the same field of activity. 
In 1909 the farmers in this district produced something 
more than 20,000 bushels of apples and reported them to 
be valued at more than ninety cents a bushel. 

The production of peaches is much more common in 
Georgia than is the production of apples. It is true that 
there are not many more farmers interested in peach 
production than in apple production, but those who are 
interested are much more extensively engaged. Nearly 
75,000 farmers, or one fourth of the farmers in the 
state, reported peach trees, and they reported a total 
of more than 10,000,000 trees of bearing age. This is 
nearly 150 trees per farm for the state as a whole. New 
trees are being set out constantly. About one third 
as many farmers have young trees as have mature trees. 
The total number of these young trees exceeds 1,500,000. 
In the community to which I refer, almost exactly the 
same number of farmers have peach trees as have apple 
trees. I noted above that 845 had apple trees and I 
note now that 885 have peach trees, but I reported only 
about 80,000 apple trees, whereas the 885 farmers have 
more than 400,000 peach trees, or nearly 500 trees per 



ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES OF THE COMMUNITY 57 

farm. A considerable number have trees not yet of 
bearing age, and the number of those trees is about 
18,000. 

The greatest necessity at the present time is the study 
of the best care of these fruit trees, and the best methods 
of marketing the fruit. The farmers should thoroughly 
organize to market their fruit, and until they do organize 
they cannot expect to make much money from their 
enterprises. Provision should be made to dry and can 
or otherwise preserve these fruits in season when the 
market is low, and a general manager should look after 
the securing of proper crates, the packing, sorting, and 
grading of the fruit, as well as railroad rates, market 
prices, etc., if the products are to be sold as fresh fruit. 

The production of pears is of much less importance 
in the state, but even this industry might easily develop 
into one of very large proportions. Only 185 of the 3092 
farmers in the community under consideration reported 
pear trees. These reported an average of about twenty- 
five per farm. Such pears as were produced, however, 
were reported to be worth almost $1 per bushel. 

Plums, like pears, hold a secondary place both in the 
state and in the community being studied. Only 94 
farmers reported plum trees and these reported an aver- 
age of from forty to fifty trees per farm. About one 
third as many reported young trees and these reported 
an average of ten trees per farm showing that at least 
a few of the farmers are interested in the building up of 
this industry. A study should be made showing the 



58 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

successes and failures of these few farmers who are 
attempting to build up this industry, and if successful 
in their efforts enough farmers should go into the busi- 
ness to make a good organization possible. What I 
have said of plum trees is equally true of cherry trees. 
Only about one farmer out of every thirty in the state 
reports cherry trees, and the average number of trees for 
the state as a whole does not exceed five per farmer. 
In this special community in the northwestern part of 
the state, however, although the number of farmers re- 
porting is only eighty-one, they have an average of 
thirteen trees per farm. Such cherries as they produce 
they reported to be worth more than $2 a bushel. 

The production of apricots is almost unknown in the 
community under consideration. Six farmers, however, 
have from one to two trees and are conducting experi- 
ments. None of these reported any production from 
their trees. A very small number of farmers reported 
the production of quinces, showing that this fruit, also, 
is the subject of experiment. 

There is at the present time great opportunity to ex- 
tend the production of several different kinds of orchard 
fruits, and the farmers of this community should not 
be satisfied until they have learned better how to pro- 
duce these fruits, to care for their orchards, and to secure 
the best results ; and after they have learned these lessons 
they must turn their attention towards the problem of 
marketing and preserving the fruit after it is produced. 

The production of grapes is not carried on extensively 



ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES OF THE COMMUNITY 59 

in Georgia. There are, however, a considerable number 
of farmers who produce grapes and their products. In 
the state as a whole nearly 16,000 farmers report grape 
vines of bearing age, and one fourth as many report 
grape vines not yet of bearing age. These farmers 
reported that they had some 278,000 mature grape vines, 
from which they secured about 2,767,000 pounds of 
grapes, valued at approximately $100,000. In the 
community which I have in mind, only 168 farmers re- 
ported grape vines of bearing age. They have more than 
7000 vines, and according to their more recent reports 
produce considerably more than 50,000 pounds of grapes 
in a year. This is nearly eight pounds to the vine. 
The total value of the grapes produced amounted to 
slightly less than $10 per farm. This, however, is a 
beginning and is enough to give evidence of the possi- 
bilities, provided the farmers could devote time and 
attention to this industry. 

The farmers of Georgia produce comparatively small 
amounts of small fruits. Without going into detail, I 
wish to note that only eighteen of the 3092 farmers, 
whose activities we are discussing, reported any amount 
of strawberries. These farmers reported nearly fifty 
acres devoted to strawberries, and produced nearly 
73,000 quarts. The average value per quart was approx- 
imately ten cents. From this it will be seen that these 
farmers produced more than $150 worth of strawberries 
per acre. Raspberries, loganberries, currants, and other 
small fruits were almost entirely missing. 



60 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

Vegetables. — ■ Every farmer should have a farm 
garden, and every farm family should have vegetables 
for the family table. It is a striking fact that in the 
state of Georgia, only 131,000 out of every 291,000 
farmers produced sweet potatoes on their farms. This 
is less than one half of the farmers. Only 24,000 farmers 
produced white potatoes. This is also a very small 
percentage of all farmers. A much larger percentage 
of the farmers, however, had farm gardens, — 215,000 
reporting at least a small vegetable garden. Of these, 
37,272 reported that their gardens were so small that it 
would be impossible to state the area or value of the 
vegetables grown. This leaves only 177,000, or not 
much more than 60 per cent, who have real gardens 
worthy of the name. The total area of these gardens 
amounted to 91,000 acres, or approximately one half 
acre per farm. 

Turning our attention now to the particular com- 
munity we have been considering, it is interesting to note 
that 2484 of the 3092 farmers reported that they had 
farm gardens. This leaves about 600 without any garden 
of any kind. Of those who have gardens, 423 had such 
small ones that they were unable to assign any area or 
value to the products. This leaves 2061 farmers who had 
vegetable gardens. They reported a total acreage of 
828, or a little less than one half acre per farm. The 
average value of the vegetables per farm amounted to 
something like $40, which means that the average value 
of vegetables per acre was nearly if not quite $90. This 



ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES OF THE COMMUNITY 6 1 

is a very good showing for those who had vegetable 
crops, and ought to be encouraged and extended. A 
few of these farmers are in vegetable production as a 
leading industry. In order to ascertain how many of 
these farmers depended upon vegetables for their in- 
come, an investigation was made to find out how many 
valued their vegetables at $500 or more. It was thought 
that farmers who had vegetables valued at $500 were 
worthy of being considered commercial vegetable 
farmers, comparable to commercial fruit farmers or 
commercial grain farmers. Of the 3092 farmers in this 
community who were interviewed on this subject, only 
twelve had produced vegetables with a valuation exceed- 
ing $500. These farmers had eighty-nine acres of vege- 
tables, which is between seven and eight acres per farm. 
From this area were secured about $12,000 worth of 
vegetables. This is an average of very nearly $140 per 
acre. It is clear, therefore, that whereas the average 
farmer with a small tract of land values his vegetables 
at something like $90 an acre, the commercial gardener, 
who produces vegetables in quantities and attends his 
crops carefully, is able to secure approximately $140 
an acre from his garden products. 

If farmers generally would devote an acre or even more 
to vegetables, and then would systematically organize 
to dispose of their surplus, they would find it a very 
profitable movement. They could have a small canning 
factory, with regular wagons to go about among the 
farmers collecting surplus vegetables of all kinds. 



62 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

These could be carried to the cooperative factory where 
they would be preserved for winter use, and any surplus 
could be shipped to distant parts in carload lots. Small 
fruits and orchard fruits would be carefully graded, 
sorted, packed, and prepared for shipment by these or- 
ganizations, and if the market was not satisfactory, 
the peaches could be canned, the apples sliced and dried, 
or made into cider or vinegar. There are great oppor- 
tunities along this line, if farmers could only become 
acquainted with the possibilities. 

Conclusions. — There are many economic activities 
which the individual farmer with his land and equip- 
ment and with the aid of his family is able to carry on ; 
there are many other activities in which many farmers 
must join their efforts. This is the field of rural eco- 
nomic cooperation. Aside from this sort of cooperation, 
farmers should and to a large extent do cooperate in 
the building of churches, providing for educational and 
social activities, etc. The need for cooperation in con- 
nection with the business side of agriculture is as pressing 
as in any other field of activity. Many kinds of coopera- 
tion not indicated in the above paragraphs must be 

worked out for each community. 

J. L. C. 

SURVEY OF THE ECONOMIC RELATIONSHIPS OF THE 
COMMUNITY 

i. What are the economic relationships that exist within the 
community? How many families in the community are free- 
holders? How many renters? How many dependent? How 



ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES OF THE COMMUNITY 63 

many absentee landlords represented by community property 
holdings ? How many idle rich in the community ? 

2. What provisions in the community for rapid transportation? 
For rapid communication ? Has the community well-developed 
systems of public roads ? Has it well-developed means of com- 
munication with other communities surrounding, and with the 
State or world at large ? What are the commercial and industrial 
relationships of your community to surrounding communities ? 
Are these relationships along lines of easiest access ? 

3. What is the average size of the farms of the community ? 
Are the farms adequately developed ? Is there waste land because 
of community social forms of ownership ? To what extent is the 
total available agricultural land improved ? What is the average 
value of farm property? How does this average compare with 
the values in surrounding communities ? If greater or less, what 
reasons ? What is the source of supply of farm labor in the busy 
seasons ? What wages are paid ? Are these normal or abnormal 
wages ? What is the normal relationship between the number of 
farmers and unattached laborers in your community? Do these 
relationships develop any unsettled economic conditions ? Is 
there any economic agitation or unrest in the community ? What 
forms do these agitations take ? Are they developing political 
affiliations ? 

4. What are the means and methods of marketing the products 
of the community ? Are these carefully planned out ? Is the 
method employed that of individual sale, or are there cooperative 
corporations or associations ? Has anything of a cooperative 
nature ever been undertaken ? If so, what was its history ? 

5. What is the economic status of the women of the community ? 
What are the prospects before young men and young women as 
to life in their own community? What are the ideals of the 
boys and young men with reference to work ? Is there any par- 
ticular drift from the country to the city in your community ? 
Is there any return movement from the city back to the land ? 



64 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

To what extent do the members of the community, whether farmers 
or business men, look upon work as something to be escaped 
from? To what extent are the schools educating for lives of 
work ? To what extent do the economic activities of the com- 
munity enter into the curriculum of the schools of the community ? 
To what extent is the teacher acquainted with the economic life 
of the community? To what extent do the economic demands 
of the community make themselves felt upon the life of the school ? 
Could a survey similar to the above be worked out in your 
community ? 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Adams. Science of Finance. 

Adkinson. Distribution of Products. 

Aves. Cooperative Industries. 

Bailey. Cyclopedia of American Agriculture. 4 Vols. 

Daniel. Taxation. 

Emerson and Flint. Manual of Agriculture. 

Fairchild. Rural Wealth and Welfare. 

Fay. Cooperation at Home and Abroad. 

Fraser. America at Work. 

Hadley. Railroads. 

Hobson. Cooperative Labor on the Land. 

Meyer. Railway Legislation in U. S. (1903.) 

Pratt. Organization of Agriculture. 
Small Holders. 

Roberts. The Farmer's Business Handbook. 

Seligman. Essays on Taxation. 

Wall. Handbook for Farmers and Dairymen. 

Fay, C. R. Cooperation at Home and Abroad. (New York, 
1908.) 

Nicholson, J. S. The Relations of Rents, Wages, and Profits in 
Agriculture and their Bearing on Rural Depopulation. (Lon- 
don, 1906.) 



ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES OF THE COMMUNITY 65 

Card, F. W. Farm Management. (New York, 1909.) 

Adams, Edward F. The Modem Farmer in His Business Rela- 
tions. (San Francisco, 1899.) 

Aldrich, Wilbur. Farming Corporations. (New York, 1892.) 

Hale, J. H. The Business Side of Agriculture. Massachusetts 
Public Documents. (New York, 1898.) 

Caird, Sir James. The Landed Interest and the Supply of Food. 
(London, 1878.) 

Levy, J. H. (Ed.). Symposium on the Land Question. 

Kropotkin, P. Fields, Factories, and Workshops. (Boston, 
1899.) 



CHAPTER V 

COMMUNITY HEALTH, HYGIENE, AND SANI- 
TATION 

The word community may have a large range of mean- 
ing. In the present sense " the community " is meant 
to include only rural neighborhoods, villages, and small 
towns. In other words, those social units which are 
sufficiently small for every one to know practically all 
his neighbors. 

It is precisely in these smaller social units that the 
progress of modern sanitation has lagged behind the 
most. Why has this been so? Is it possible to apply 
the principles of modern sanitation to these small com- 
munities ? 

From time immemorial poets, philosophers, and his- 
torians have pointed out that people in the country were 
healthier, happier, of greater physical stamina, and longer 
lived than in the city. It had always been held self- 
evident that man must run more risk of disease in cities 
than in villages and rural districts, and until the estab- 
lishment of modern sanitary science this view was sub- 
stantiated by facts. The death rates of cities were 
higher than those of small towns and rural districts — 
frequently almost twice as high. Naturally there grew 
up a universal belief, still tenaciously held, that the city 

66 



COMMUNITY HEALTH, HYGIENE, AND SANITATION 67 

dweller alone stood in need of protection for his health's 
sake ; a belief that Nature herself did the service of health 
officer for the dweller in the open places, and that her 
care was continuous and that her methods could not be 
bettered. This fallacious idea is still the greatest ob- 
stacle to the progress of sanitation in the villages and 
farms of the nation. 

In reality many of the largest cities, thanks to 
modern sanitary science, now have lower rates of death 
and of sickness than the rural sections and small towns in 
their vicinity. Every year shows the larger cities de- 
creasing their death rates, while the death rates for rural 
sections either decrease very, very slowly or not at all. 
Moreover, in these muckraking days, sanitarians are not 
lacking in the land who are shattering to its last founda- 
tions our long cherished belief in the superiority of the 
country as regards everything that makes for health. 
They declare that the city of to-day is not only healthier 
than the average rural community but that it would be 
still freer from contagious disease if it were not for the 
baneful influence of its insanitary rural neighbors. Sad 
days for the sentimentalists are these when the cold 
hearted scientist is not content with defaming the well 
of "The Old Oaken Bucket," by asserting that the 
water from the apartment house tap is of better sanitary 
quality, but even goes farther and proves in his most 
exasperating, irrefutable fashion that " The Old Oaken 
Bucket," in many cases, actually brings up the deadly 
typhoid germs concealed in its sparkling clear water. 



68 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

But so it is. The facts are with the iconoclast in 
many respects. Thus it has come about that the modern 
progressive city must jealously watch her country neigh- 
bors to protect the lives and health of her own citizens. 
The privies and barnyards of villages and farms are 
polluting the city watershed ; the milk from dirty farm- 
houses is continually producing fatal diarrhea in city 
infants, sowing the seeds of tuberculosis in city children, 
and every now and then causing an outbreak of typhoid, 
diphtheria, or scarlet fever among the city's citizens of 
all ages. 

The reason why there is crying need for greater in- 
terest in sanitation in the smaller communities is because 
such communities, hugging the delusion of superiority 
over the cities in matters of health, have done nothing 
to insure good health for themselves ; hence, the in- 
evitable result that they are being hygienically outclassed 
by the cities who have more than overcome by science 
the handicap imposed by nature. 

Granted that there is need of hygienic awakening in 
the smaller communities, there still remains the question 
of how sanitary advances can be made in our smaller 
social units. Man's fundamental sanitary needs are 
the same whether he live in Chicago or in the valley 
of the Yakima. He needs pure water, pure milk, pure 
food, pure air, protection against contagious disease and 
accident, sanitary housing, proper preparation of his 
food, conditions of labor which do not involve exhaus- 
tion and depletion of his vitality, reasonable hours of 



COMMUNITY HEALTH, HYGIENE, AND SANITATION 69 

rest, a certain amount of recreation, and safe disposal 
of the wastes of mankind, animals, and industrial es- 
tablishments. 

The ends are the same, the means must of necessity 
vary widely, but they are almost everywhere within 
reach. The fact that the dweller in the rural hamlet 
cannot have a municipally guarded and purified water 
supply is no valid reason why he should consider it nec- 
essary to allow his shallow well to receive the drainage 
of his privy and barnyard. Yet how often does the rural 
citizen seem to make his sanitary arrangements on that 
basis ! 

The kind of dwelling in which people live is far more 
easily controlled by the individual in the country than 
in the city. In the city building restrictions, location 
of streets, the direction in which the lots face, the 
nearness to the neighboring buildings, all have their 
effect upon the dwelling and all are largely beyond the 
control of the individual. But in villages, and to an 
even greater extent in the open country, all these 
things are under the individual's control. 

A locality with good natural drainage, preferably with 
a slight elevation and with a pleasant southern exposure, 
has long been recognized by the common experience of 
mankind as the greatest desideratum in a country 
residence. Yet how frequently in a region where all 
these conditions could be easily fulfilled will the typical 
farmhouse be found in a damp bottom, with the sun 
cut off for a large portion of the day, and receiving 



_^ 



70 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

the surface drainage of the outhouses located on higher 
ground ? 

The old idea of keeping nearly all the rooms of a dwell- 
ing shut and the windows tightly closed has, happily, 
largely become a thing of the past, yet adequate domestic 
ventilation, especially of sleeping apartments, is all too 
infrequently practiced to-day. 

Perhaps the greatest problem that smaller communities 
have to face from a sanitary standpoint is the inter- 
related problem of drinking water and disposal of wastes. 
If the community is too small or too scattered to admit 
of a community water supply, then the citizens must 
usually depend upon individual wells. It is frequently 
assumed that wells are inherently dangerous. In 
reality, a well properly chosen and properly protected 
is frequently a safer source of water than many city 
supplies. But only too frequently can the well be found 
utterly unprotected from surface pollution, shallow, un- 
cleaned, and directly in the path of seepage from privy 
vaults on higher ground. 

The toilet in small communities is another serious 
sanitary problem. The crude, old-fashioned, open privy 
vault is too prevalent. There have been many varieties 
of sewage disposal evolved for isolated dwellings based 
upon the septic tank principle, which will work in prac- 
tice as well as in theory if they be scientifically con- 
structed and properly calculated as to size. Even if 
flush toilets are not available, the ordinary toilet can be 
vastly improved by the installation of screens, regular 



COMMUNITY HEALTH, HYGIENE, AND SANITATION 7 1 

disinfection with lime, and periodical cleaning. Where 
toilets must of necessity be located within dangerously 
near proximity to equally inevitable wells, there should 
be a rigidly enforced community law that all such 
toilets must be constructed with water-tight vaults, of 
concrete preferably, so that there can be no pollution 
of the wells. The cesspool has been characterized by 
an indignant health official as the sanitary abomination ; 
yet in some form or other they are frequently necessary. 
If they receive only kitchen waste and are properly con- 
structed they are not particularly dangerous from a 
sanitary standpoint. Even though they receive the 
entire sewage of a household they can frequently be so 
arranged in respect to location and character of construc- 
tion as to be not objectionable. As a rule, there is 
nothing which so well repays the financial sacrifice by 
small communities as the installation of a sewerage 
system at the earliest possible opportunity. But if 
such a system is contemplated, the doctrine of the 
" square deal " ought to be enough to restrain any com- 
munity from dumping its sewage into the drinking water 
of a sister community. 

Garbage collection and destruction is another neces- 
sity of community life which is often erroneously sup- 
posed to concern larger cities alone. How often will the 
visiting sanitarian be told that a certain community has 
no garbage problem because every one disposes of his 
own, and how frequently will a half hour inspection of 
village back lots annihilate this pleasant little fiction ! 



72 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

And how long will American communities be content 
to have one clean-up day a year or a decade instead of 
treating the removal of garbage and refuse as it should 
be treated — as a community problem, to be promptly 
and efficiently handled by the community ? 

The fly has come in for a great deal of adverse promi- 
nence in the past few years, and deservedly so. " Musca 
Domestica " is a bad citizen! But there is small oppor- 
tunity of suppressing him by swattings, screens, traps, 
and poisons while unprotected and undisturbed manure 
piles and privies continue to fulfill their function as fly 
incubators. 

The city dweller has his milk supply scrutinized by 
scores of watchful officials and safeguarded by many 
carefully enforced provisions which go far to offset the 
handicap of long transportation and the handling in- 
volved. But the villager, living within a few miles of 
the dairies from which his milk supply comes, fre- 
quently needs to summon the faith that will stub- 
bornly ignore the evidence of the senses, and go on the 
hypothesis that to the pure all things are pure before he 
can swallow with equanimity the bacterial aquarium that 
is left in his milk can daily. 

Those who have visited rural slaughterhouses are 
fully aware of two facts ; first, that it is no superhuman 
feat to keep a small slaughterhouse, located in a se- 
cluded field or near the bank of a beautiful running 
brook, in a neat, clean, and presentable condition, and, 
secondly, that this is very seldom done. Tongue cannot 



COMMUNITY HEALTH, HYGIENE, AND SANITATION 73 

tell nor pen describe the type of slovenly kept, foul, 
insanitary rural slaughterhouse so often found by any one 
who will take the trouble to make even the most super- 
ficial inspection. It needs the combined evidence of the 
optic and olfactory organs to paint that vivid picture upon 
the brain, but once experienced it will never be forgotten. 

The community schools should be sanitary models 
for all its citizens. They should be models of cleanliness, 
good lighting, good water supply, proper ventilation, 
and of adequate sanitary toilet facilities, including 
sanitary facilities for drinking water. In them the 
future citizens of the nation spend nearly half their wak- 
ing hours most of the months of the years which have the 
most important bearing upon their character formation 
and upon their final physical development. 

The teacher in the public schools should be sufficiently 
posted in the rudiments of private and public hygiene, 
and should be sufficiently awake to the vital importance 
of the subject to inculcate in the minds of the pupils 
daily some practical application of hygienic principles. 

Not many years ago public health was often regarded 
as synonymous with epidemiology. Men felt that if 
special guards were appointed, quarantine rigidly main- 
tained, and elaborate disinfection measures carried out 
during times of epidemic peril, all had been done that was 
humanly possible ; then the balance of the responsibility 
was conveniently shifted on to " Divine Providence," 
?„nd the community went on its way as usual until a 
new outbreak occurred. 



74 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

Each year it is being better appreciated that 
epidemics and contagious diseases, both important com- 
munity problems as they are, fall far short of compris- 
ing the entire field of public health and sanitation. At 
the same time the] manner of handling and the check- 
ing or prevention of outbreaks of contagious diseases is 
one of the community's most important moral obliga- 
tions. Contagious diseases can only be checked or 
prevented by intelligent watchfulness and care. A 
portion of this protection against contagious diseases 
the nation provides, another portion is extended by the 
activities of the state and county health organizations, 
but a very large proportion of this protection must be 
provided by the local community, whether that com- 
munity be large or small. 

What is everybody's business is usually nobody's 
business, hence the necessity of the health official. 

One of the great economic and social lessons that 
the American people must learn in the next generation 
is that there is as great if not greater need for the serv- 
ices of the trained sanitarian in the country as in the 
city. He must develop his style of attack against the 
three great mortal enemies of man — Ignorance, Filth, 
and Disease, along quite different lines from those of his 
colleague, the municipal sanitarian. Nevertheless, his 
services are just as badly needed and just as valuable. 
He must supervise the health of the children in their 
schools, he must scrutinize the wells, the houses, the out- 
houses, the dairies, the yards, and the manure piles. He 



COMMUNITY HEALTH, HYGIENE, AND SANITATION 75 

must call attention to any conditions that are prejudicial 
to the health, safety, and comfort of the community, and 
insist by persuasion usually, by legal means very rarely, 
that all such conditions be remedied. He must study 
the channels of infection and endeavor to prevent any 
infectious diseases from obtaining a foothold in his com- 
munity, and if they do crop up, in spite of his endeavors, 
then he must exert himself to the utmost to prevent 
their dissemination broadcast through his jurisdiction. 

And, finally, every community should insist that its 
vital bookkeeping be kept up to date. The progressive 
citizen, and particularly the progressive educator, 
should not be content to remain in ignorance as to the 
significance of the death rate. And the intelligent citi- 
zen of any community, large or small, should not only 
know what the death rate of his community is from year 
to year, but he should know what it has been for years 
back. And if he finds that there has been a standstill 
or an increase in his community's death rate for the 
past two decades, then let him bestir himself and 
begin to arouse his fellow citizens, for he is living in a 
community which has failed to keep up with the spirit 
of the twentieth century. 

And if upon inquiry he should find that he is living 
in a community which does not even regard human life 
as of sufficient value to keep the tally of the deaths of its 
citizens, then let him bestir himself with double vigor ; 
for, from the standpoint of public health, he is living 
in a semibarbarous and not in a civilized community. 

E. R. K. 



76 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

SURVEY OF THE CONDITIONS OF HEALTH, HYGIENE, 
AND SANITATION IN THE LOCAL COMMUNITY 

i. What is the average death rate of your community? What 
is the death rate for the children of your community? Have 
there been any serious epidemics in the community in the past 
decade ? What kind, if any ? What were their causes ? Have 
the causes been determined and removed ? What is the attitude 
of the community with reference to sickness and epidemics ; that 
is, does the community accept these things as natural and neces- 
sary, or is there an intelligent appreciation of the fact that a great 
many dreaded diseases are preventable? Are there many cases 
of typhoid fever in the community? Is there some genuine in- 
formation in the community in reference to the causes of typhoid 
fever ? 

2. What is the general standard of vitality in the people of the 
community ? Are they energetic, full of life, or lacking in vitality ? 
Are there any reasons for the conditions that exist? Are there 
any social excuses extant for the persistence of community hygienic 
conditions? What is the community attitude toward questions 
of drinking water, milk, stale foods, and the like ? Has there 
been any sort of crusade against flies and other insects that spread 
infection and contagion? 

3. What factors may tend to make a well dangerous and con- 
taminate the drinking water? What factors may make milk 
impure ? What conditions about the home may become sources 
of disease ? Is the community backward in any of its provisions 
for complete sanitation ? 

4. Are the health officers of the community intelligent and 
alert in doing their duty? Are sources of contagion and con- 
tamination immediately investigated and controlled ? Will public 
opinion permit social control of health conditions in the com- 
munity ? Are the local doctors capable and responsible in these 
matters ? 



COMMUNITY HEALTH, HYGIENE, AND SANITATION 77 

5. Why is the average typhoid death rate in the United States 
and Canada about four times as high as in Europe ? Why do a 
large percentage of all infants born in the United States die before 
they are a year old? Whose fault is it that these things are 
true ? What is being done by your community toward develop- 
ing a greater intelligence in reference to the problems of health, 
of general hygiene, and community sanitary conditions ? 

6. What is being done by your school toward promoting com- 
munity intelligence along these lines? What is being done in 
your school to safeguard the health and vitality of the children 
themselves ? How often should the air of a schoolroom be 
changed ? Is there any special ventilating system employed in 
your school ? What is the proper ratio between window space 
and floor space in a schoolroom ? (See Dressier, American School- 
houses, published by the United States Bureau of Education.) 
What measures do you follow for safeguarding the vision of the 
boys and girls in the schoolroom ? To what extent, if any, does 
school work tend to lower the level of vitality of your boys and 
girls? Are they paying for their intellectual advancement in 
lowered physical vitality ? Are you taking steps to make sure 
that the teeth of the children are being properly cared for ? Are 
there any feeble-minded or defective children in the school who 
are a dead weight upon the school and who should be in appro- 
priate institutions? Are there any with nervous disorders or 
epileptics who are not being properly cared for ? Does the general 
atmosphere of the school tend to preserve a healthy state of mind 
and body in the children of the schools? If not, why? Does 
the work of the school tend to produce unnatural strains on the 
teacher ? If so, why ? 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

It is impossible at present to select any one or any group of 
works that will cover this subject. Most of the State Boards of 
Health and the United States Public Health Service, and the 



78 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

Health Departments of the larger cities of the country publish 
bulletins and reports. Requests to the secretary of any State 
Board of Health, stating upon just what topic information is 
desired, will be at once answered, and if the State has any bulle- 
tins on that subject they are furnished free of charge up to the 
limit of the edition. 

The United States Public Health Service Reports can be ob- 
tained by forwarding to the Surgeon-General of the Service, 
Washington, D.C., a request to be placed on the mailing list. 
The teacher or citizen who wishes information on some particular 
problem of sanitation will probably obtain much more satisfactory 
assistance if when communicating with the United States Public 
Health Service they specify exactly on what points information is 
desired, than by simply making a general request for publications. 

Without in any way reflecting adversely upon the most useful 
and excellent bulletins of other State Boards, the following are 
suggested as being particularly readable for non-technical readers, 
and, to a slight extent, for specific purposes, although it must 
be understood that practically every State Board of Health that 
publishes bulletins regularly will in a year cover a larger range of 
subjects than those referred to here. A few of the State Board 
bulletins are practically unreadable, being composed almost 
entirely of statistical data. 

The following State Boards of Health issue from time to time 
exceptionally good special articles on individual contagious 
diseases : 

Maine South Carolina 

Pennsylvania Illinois 

Michigan 

The following State Boards of Health often feature pure food 
articles : 

Massachusetts Kansas 

Indiana California 



COMMUNITY HEALTH, HYGIENE, AND SANITATION 79 

Topics such as sewage disposal and water supply are often 
treated by bulletins of the Boards of Health of : 
New York California 

Ohio Iowa 

Rural sanitation has been made particularly prominent in the 
South because of the hookworm campaign. The Florida, Loui- 
siana, North Carolina, and Virginia State Boards of Health bulle- 
tins are exceptionally good reading for the amateur student of 
sanitation who is interested in this subject. 

Such subjects as school hygiene, the common drinking cup, 
tuberculosis, the fly nuisance, etc., have been discussed in the past 
few years by nearly all State Boards of Health that publish bulle- 
tins. 

General References 

Elementary. (For school use.) 

Ritchie. Primer of Sanitation. 

Tuttle. Principles of Public Health. 

Gulick. Hygiene Series. 

Hutchinson. Handbook of Health. 

Advanced. 

Harrington and Richardson. Practical Hygiene. 

Bergey. Principles of Hygiene. 

Egbert. Hygiene and Sanitation. 

Blair. Public Hygiene. (2 Vols.) 

Whitelegge and Newman. Hygiene and Public Health. 

W. H. Allen. Civics and Health. 

All these works are intended for advanced students, but none of 
them are written in a technical fashion and all can be easily read 
and, except for occasional paragraphs, easily understood by any 
intelligent person. Every public library should have at least one 
of these works or those of some other author of equal standing. It 
is to be remembered that the science of public hygiene has advanced 



80 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

so rapidly that editions of the standard works that are over ten 
years old are apt to be very misleading in important essentials, 
while the standard works of a generation ago, the kind most apt 
to be found in public libraries, are almost useless, and their study 
will only lead to confusion. 

Periodical References 

There are several magazines and journals which are devoted 
to public health topics either entirely or to a considerable extent, 
while the popular magazines, so called, are devoting considerable 
space to sanitation of recent years. The following journals are 
especially recommended : 

American Journal of Public Health (New York). 

Journal of the American Medical Association (Chicago). 

The Survey (New York). 

The Journal of Outdoor Life (New York). 

The Public Health Journal (Toronto, Ontario). 

Among the popular magazines, the following are perhaps 
worthy of special notice because of the frequency with which 
public health topics are treated : 

The Literary Digest (New York). 
The Technical World Magazine. 
The World's Work. 

It is to be regretted that there are several periodicals which 
though printing much of value to their readers in the line of sani- 
tation, at the same time either present it in a "Muckraking" or 
"Yellow Journalistic" form, or else utilize their sanitation articles 
merely as a basis for pseudo-scientific arguments in favor of some 
eating, breathing, exercise, or fasting cult. These faddist publica- 
tions are, on the whole, hindering rather than aiding the progress 
of intelligent practical sanitation. There are several periodicals 
issued more or less regularly by chemical and other manufacturing 



COMMUNITY HEALTH, HYGIENE, AND SANITATION 8 1 

concerns whose products are of some sanitary nature. While all 
of these are frankly of an advertising nature, yet some of these 
publications have real scientific and literary merit. "Modern 
Sanitation," published by the Standard Mfg. Co., of Pittsburg, 
deserves special mention among this class of publications for its 
high grade literary, scientific, and typographical quality. 

Special Subjects 

The number of excellent works on special subjects of sanitary 
interest, written for a nontechnical class of readers, has become 
very great in the past few years. References can only be made to 
a few: 

The Infant, the Parent, and the State Health (London). 

Mason. Water Supply. 

Cosgrove. The History of Sanitation. 

L. O. Howard. The Mosquito. 

L. 0. Howard. The House Fly. 

Whipple. Typhoid Fever. 

Huber. Consumption and Civilization. 

Rosenau. The Milk Question. 

There are many good books adapted to popular reading on 
the tuberculosis problem — too many to allow of special men- 
tion. The Secretary of the State Board of Health or of the local 
or State Antituberculosis organization is as\ rule the best source 
from which to seek information on this subject. 

Special Reports 

There are being constantly published by federal, state, and city 
governments special reports and monographs of exceptional 
interest from the standpoint of sanitation. Among such sources 
of sanitary information are : 
The Report of the Country Life Commission. 



82 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

The Report of the Committee of One Hundred on National 

Vitality. 
Report on Sanitary Campaign in Minnesota, By Caroline Bartlett 

Crane, published by the Minnesota u State Board of Health. 
The Annual Mortality Reports of the Census Bureau. 
Certain Bulletins of the U. S. Dept. of Agriculture. 
Reports of the Annual Conference of Health Officers of many 

States. 
U. S. Public Health Reports, Washington, D.C. 
Certain Bulletins of the U. S. Department of Labor. 
Reports of the Hookworm Commission. 
Reports of Carnegie Foundation. 
Reports of the Annual Sessions of : 

The National Tuberculosis Association. 

The National Association for Prevention of Infant Mortality. 

The National Association for Sex Hygiene. 

The Conference of State & Provincial Boards of Health. 

The American Association of Medical Milk Commissions. 



CHAPTER VI 
THE LOCAL HISTORY OF THE COMMUNITY 

Europeans regard a general knowledge of the history 
of their country, province, and city as an essential 
factor in even an elementary education. Inquiry by 
the American visitor will lead to the discovery that 
almost every intelligent peasant boy is at least fairly 
informed about the annals of the locality ; its heroes are 
his own, its glory is reflected in the enthusiasm with which 
he recites their deeds to the passing stranger. But when 
the immigrant, emerging from such a background, ar- 
rives in America, he is apt to find that those among 
whom his social lot is cast know little of our national 
history and virtually nothing of the career of the state 
or city; his children are not even taught local history 
in the public schools. Small wonder if he concludes 
that America has no history worth the telling, no state 
or city heroes worthy the name ; that America " just 
grew up," and is merely a land of opportunity in which to 
make dollars. 

Can American patriots be made out of these foreigners, 
in the face of such neglect? Can a man be taught to 
love his country or his state or city, unless he is taught 
that great deeds have here been done, that her high ideals 

83 



84 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

are cherished, that his locality has been and is a factor 
in civilizing the New World ? Are even our American- 
born boys and girls being made into the same sort of 
patriots that they rear abroad? Is it not time that as 
teachers we pay some regard to our state and local 
history ; that we begin to cultivate a taste for this study 
in the minds of youth, and therein lay the foundations 
for that love of locality, which is the essence of civic 
patriotism ? 

Much account is now justly being taken in our schools 
of the study of nature. The child who has been made 
familiar with the characteristics of animals, birds, flowers, 
and trees, and can name them on sight, finds that the 
great earth is teeming with interesting neighbors of man, 
whose acquaintance is an ever-present joy. He walks 
thereafter in a more beautiful, broader, and more invit- 
ing land than that traveled by his untutored fellows. 

With precisely the same end in view, pupils should 
acquire a knowledge of the history of their locality. To 
the casual observer, the record of an obscure American 
town may seem to furnish few circumstances worthy of 
remembrance. But a careful study of its annals will 
invariably reveal some facts and incidents well calcu- 
lated to arouse the interest, if not the enthusiasm, of 
every intelligent member of the community. 

The most obvious and simple query concerning any 
town is, why is it situated exactly where it is ? Merely to 
answer this often necessitates much research, which is 
quite apt to yield interesting geographical, topographical, 



THE LOCAL HISTORY OF THE COMMUNITY 85 

and historical facts. In the United States, it quite fre- 
quently leads the inquirer back to the aboriginal village 
which first occupied the site ; this opens the field of local 
Indian archaeology, which is sure to attract a con- 
siderable group of students. 

A topic abounding in picturesque possibilities is the 
account of the coming of the first white people thither — 
their reason for, and the manner of their coming ; their 
early experiences at this place, and what induced them to 
stay ; and generally, what manner of folk they were. 

The study then turns on the social and civic institu- 
tions established here by these pioneer men and women — 
the first school and its teachers, the first church and its 
pastors and congregation, the first post office and post- 
master, the first public meeting place, the first public 
officials chosen, and the first doctors and lawyers ; the 
creation of clubs, societies, fraternal organizations ; the 
beginnings of commercial and industrial establishments 
— stores, mills, and factories ; the building of public 
roads, many of them doubtless following the course of 
earlier Indian trails of considerable antiquity ; the con- 
struction of bridges, the opening of stage routes and 
other transportation facilities ; the coming of steam- 
boats and railroads. 

The subsequent history of the town can now logically 
and interestingly be traced — the later development 
of the social and political institutions planted by the 
pioneers ; the growth of manufacturing and commercial 
interests ; the inauguration of such public necessities 



86 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

and conveniences as police, fire department, waterworks 
and sewerage system, gas and electricity, street cars, 
hospitals, and organized charities ; the beginnings of 
humane societies, the chamber of commerce, and other 
private organizations for the public welfare — in short, 
a study of every agency that has affected the develop- 
ment of civilization in this community. Not least of 
these will be found the immigration thither of colonists 
from Europe, who should always be studied, at least 
cursorily, in connection with their status in Europe — 
the economic, social, political, or religious reasons that 
induced them to settle in the New World, and what 
qualities they have brought with them to enrich and 
broaden American life. With all this, there should be 
a thoughtful summarizing of reasons why the town grew 
and is likely to grow — ■ the geographical, topographical, 
and historical considerations underlying this growth. 

There must be some study, also, of the careers of those 
men and women who in different fields have conspicu- 
ously assisted in this forward movement; and of the 
leading events otherwise affecting the town's history — 
fires, floods, participations in wars, industrial dis- 
turbances, navigation improvements, new railroads, 
" booms," etc. Topics such as these will readily suggest 
themselves to the intelligent teacher. 

Thus it will be seen that the smallest and apparently 
the least interesting of American communities presents 
abundant and significant problems for the local his- 
torian, economist, sociologist, or other student of fife 



THE LOCAL HISTORY OF THE COMMUNITY 87 

and manners ; and woven in and around these problems 
will surely be discovered many a life story to illumine 
the tale with grace and romance. The child who has 
been made familiar with this local history will feel that 
the traditions and annals of his birthplace are a rich 
heritage that he shares in common with every man, 
woman, and child in his neighborhood. He will have 
acquired an understanding of the varied national and ra- 
cial elements that necessarily go to make up his commu- 
nity, and what each has contributed to the common good. 
He will have been taught to take a broader view of the 
position held by his home town in the state and in the 
nation ; he will appreciate what it stands for and should 
stand for. With such qualifications, he will surely 
become a more useful, more loyal citizen than will the 
lad to whom the place is an unmeaning checkerboard 
collection of streets, sidewalks, and houses. 

R. G. T. 

SURVEY OF THE LOCAL HISTORY OF THE COMMUNITY 

Was your region occupied by Indians before the arrival hither 
of white men ? If so, what tribe ? Tell what you know of them ; 
indicate on a map what extent of territory they hunted over. 
Did they have a village in this region ? Give its name, and the 
names of any of its chiefs of whom you have read or heard. Did 
you ever see a member of this tribe ? 

Are there any remaining evidences of Indian occupation here — 
old trails, implements, mounds, graves, planting fields, shell heaps 
markings on rocks, etc.? 

Who was the first white man to reach this spot, so far as you 
know ? Why did he come here — what was he doing ; how and 



88 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

along what route did he come ; how long did he stay ? If an 
explorer, missionary, hunter, fisherman, lumberman or the like, 
what was his story ? Did his coming lead to anything permanent 
— the planting of an Indian mission, a fur-trade post, a fishing 
station, or a lumber camp? What is the story of the first per- 
manent settlement ? 

When the first pioneer is joined by others of his race, the com- 
munity may be considered as established. What was the life of 
these pioneers — their occupations, methods of making a living, 
grinding grains, marketing crops, defending themselves from the 
Indians, hardships, amusements, etc. 

What can you find out about the founding of schools, churches, 
and the other social, political, commercial, and industrial in- 
stitutions of this early community ? Are there any pioneers left ? 
Are you keeping their stories ? 

If your community is in a region that at some time in its history 
has been held by some other power — Great Britain, France, 
Spain, Holland, Sweden, or Russia — this fact will give rise to 
many questions : How and why did it become a colony of that 
nation? How and why did it fall into American hands? In 
some localities, facts of romantic interest will be developed by such 
queries. 

Has your community ever suffered great disasters — as by 
storm, flood, earthquake, or fire ? Has it ever been the scene of 
a battle ? If not itself the actual scene of war, has it sent repre- 
sentatives to fight battles elsewhere ? Are you using these veterans 
of the wars in any educational way ? The interview is here, also, 
a useful method of awakening interest. 

Has your community ever taken part in, or been the scene of any 
events that are great in the history of the nation or state — such 
as expositions, historical celebrations and conventions or other 
great meetings? What great public works are in or near your 
town — irrigation dams, levees, harbor improvements, or canals ? 
Does the town manufacture articles that have a wide sale, or ship 



THE LOCAL HISTORY OF THE COMMUNITY 89 

produce that is in demand elsewhere? What stretch of country 
does your town's railways traverse ? 

What nationalities, other than native Americans, are represented 
in your community population ? When did these foreigners come ? 
What were the causes of their emigration — religious, political, 
or economic ? In what manner and by what routes (here give 
details) did they come to this town from the Old World ? What 
customs did they bring with them, that they still retain ? Are 
they still supporting churches, schools, and newspapers in their 
native language, and keeping Old World holidays ? In what 
manner have they contributed to civilization in the New World ? 
Are they better off in America than they were in their old homes ? 

Have any of your townsmen or townswomen gained a state-wide 
or still greater reputation — as authors, artists, singers, actors, 
orators, soldiers or sailors, statesmen, financiers, inventors, or 
captains of industry ? Has your town any historic sites, famous 
buildings, monuments, parks, drives, neighborhood scenery, or 
other attractions for visitors ? 

What have been the chief causes of your town's growth ? Is its 
geographical situation such as to give hope for continued growth ? 
Is it an agricultural, commercial, industrial, or educational town 
— or all of these ? What part have railroads, canals, or steamboat 
lines, or ordinary public highways, played in the success of the 
town ? If the town has decreased in population what causes have 
led thereto ? 

If the community is a small village, these and like questions will 
be helpful. Why do people live in this place ? How many pro- 
fessions, trades, and varieties of business are represented ? Why 
has the village remained small? What opportunities are there 
for further growth ? 

What uses are you making of these things in the education of 
the boys and girls of the community ?j 



90 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

The student should inform himself as to what books, pamphlets, 
or series of newspaper articles have been published bearing on the 
history and description of the region. In some favored localities 
there is abundant material of this sort ; but generally, there is little 
or none. But in either case, any intelligent study should to a con- 
siderable degree resolve itself into a matter of original research on 
the part of the student. 

He should, therefore, read what some of the masters of his- 
torical research have to suggest as to means and methods. In 
the first two chapters of Vol. I of Hart's American History told 
by Contemporaries (New York) there is a discussion of historical 
sources and their uses, which will be found helpful. Channing 
and Hart's Guide to the Study of American History (Boston) con- 
tains many suggestions, and a bibliography guiding the reader 
to more extended discussions of the subject. Small and Vincent's 
Introduction to the Study of Society is also an admirable manual. 
In the last named work, there is told (Book II) in brief compass, 
the story of the development of an anonymous Western community 
(the reference is to Topeka, Kans.), from the arrival of the first 
"Prairie schooner" to the final evolution of the settlement into 
a flourishing city. A reading of this sketch will be instructive to 
students of local history anywhere in the United States, but es- 
pecially in the Middle West and the trans-Mississippi country. 

The following Bulletins of Information issued by the Wisconsin 
State Historical Society, Madison, Wis., may be obtained on ap- 
plication (price 10 cents each) : Nos. 4, 12 and 54, "Suggestions 
to Local Historians and Local History Societies"; No. 9, "How 
Local History Material should be Preserved in Libraries"; No. 
25, "Gathering of Local History Material by Public Libraries"; 
No. 37, "The Local History Story Hour, in Public Libraries." 

Teachers should cooperate with the public library, and en- 
courage the persistent and permanent collection thereby of all 



THE LOCAL HISTORY OF THE COMMUNITY 9 1 

manner of local history material, no matter how apparently 
ephemeral. This material consists not only of books, pamphlets, 
and leaflets avowedly historical, but reports of local governmental 
bodies and public and private institutions (including publications 
of churches, schools, clubs, etc.) — particularly newspaper files, 
which last are of prime importance in original historical research. 

In connection with the public library, there should be instituted 
a local historical museum of well-selected survivals of the past — 
Indian implements and dress, pioneer relics of every sort, and 
articles expecially illustrative of events in the town's history. 

Products of the town or vicinity should, when practicable, 
be exhibited. There should also be a collection of well-mounted 
specimens of the fauna and flora of the neighborhood, and care- 
fully selected local geological specimens. Care should be taken, 
however, not to overload the museum with trash. The Wiscon- 
sin State Historical Society's Bulletin No. 43, "Local Public 
Museums," will be helpful by way of suggestions. 



CHAPTER VII 
THE POLITICAL LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 

In the old common life of the people, in the days when 
the common law was growing up, when industry was 
simple, and social organization was still primitive, all 
the people of the community knew each other fairly well 
and what each member of the community did was fairly 
common knowledge. During these primitive centuries 
there was a division of labor in such way that certain 
members of the community had the task of carrying on 
the political life and the control of the social order. It 
was not supposed to be the right of the people whose 
labor was agriculture to have any knowledge of, or part 
in, the political life. Theirs not to reason why any- 
thing was done. It was theirs but to obey the ruling 
powers. 

But in the struggle towards democracy the average 
individual has been slowly emerging into a state of mind 
which makes him aware that he must have some actual 
social knowledge of the elements that make up the 
political life of his community, his state, and his nation. 
Not only for his own salvation, but for the salvation of 
the community, the citizen of a democracy must know 
what is going on in his community. He is not prying 
into other people's business when he attempts to find 

92 



THE POLITICAL LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 93 

out the forces that control the political activities of the 
community. It is his own business, and he has not only 
a right to know, but the only hope of democracy is 
that he shall know. A study of the political life of the 
community may very well be made along the following 
lines of inquiry : 

1. The Basis of the Government. — Questions as to 
the sources of authority in government are not out of 
place. The " divine right of kings " has probably passed 
away in America. But the great problem of the present, 
so far as the political life is concerned, is as to whether we 
shall have a real democracy, with the sources of power 
in the people themselves, or a partial democracy with 
nominal power in the hands of the people but the real 
power in the hands of some special class or interest, and 
the whole machinery of government manipulated by 
insidious influences. 

2. Reasons for Government. — Government exists 
for the sake of providing order, freedom, individual rights, 
and education. But it also exists for the sake of estab- 
lishing responsibility. Government has leaned always 
in the past upon the general theory that that was the 
best government which governed least. The individual 
and his rights, therefore, have suffered very frequently, 
while those influences which tend to protect property 
rights have ever been duly emphasized. Property has 
its rights, but property has also its duties. And the fun- 
damental reasons for government are to be found not 
primarily in the protection of property, but in the 



94 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

establishment of such a social order as shall give pro- 
gressive direction to the development of moral person- 
ality. 

3. Support of Government. — Much of our govern- 
ment in the past and even to-day seems to have gone 
upon the general assumption that since the weak need 
an undue proportion of the protection of government 
they should pay an undue proportion of the support of 
the government, but there are two phases of the question 
of the support of government : 

First — The financial support. — Under the financial 
phase we come face to face with the questions of equitable 
distribution of taxation ; corrupt influences which wield 
government in antisocial directions ; wasteful expendi- 
tures of public money ; and systems of public policy 
which alienate the sympathies of the progressive man 
and woman and make even the most hearty patriot doubt 
the right of the state to levy taxes. Undoubtedly a 
fundamental problem in the education of the citizens of 
our times is this necessity of an education in the direc- 
tion of hearty cooperation in the financial support of 
government. But this brings us to the other phase. 

Second — The moral support. — Here we have such 
attitudes toward government as are expressed by the ex- 
treme theories of individualism on the one hand, which 
denies the necessity of all forms of government; and 
that extreme socialism on the other hand, which makes 
government synonymous with the cooperative will of the 
people. In these democratic times government must 



THE POLITICAL LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 95 

be more and more the actual expression of the will of the 
people if it is to have the moral support of the people. 
Citizenship in government means, in these days, funda- 
mentally, simply a complete moral personality. For 
this reason theoretical individualism and theoretical 
socialism are very close together. 

4. The Machinery of Government. — The success of 
government in a democratic society depends upon in- 
dividual interests and duties. Government exists for 
the organization of a social order which shall make pos- 
sible complete moral personal development. The gov- 
ernment will, therefore, express certain great moral 
attitudes, and there will be involved in the study of 
government great questions of economics and politics 
and these will help to determine the character of the 
machinery of government. 

There will always be two elemental types of political 
society. One stands for the conservatism of the past 
and the sufficiency of the present. The other stands 
for the worth of the past and the present but the greater 
worth of the future. The one is conservative, — if 
not reactionary, — the other progressive, if not radical. 
And between these two, public opinion will play back 
and forth, and under normal and healthy social life 
progress will be made. But democracy needs a more 
adequate form of machinery for the organization of its 
public opinion so that it can overcome the mere satisfac- 
tion of the conservative and hold in check the mere 
radicalism of the progressive. 



96 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

Political society is just now in the throes of working 
out a more complete system for voicing public opinion. 
Political conventions do not suffice, for men have learned 
too well the game of politics, and conventions serve little 
but as occasions for the exploitation of corrupt measures. 
Public assemblies in any large measure are impossible 
in a nation that numbers its population by the millions. 
But public assemblies are still possible and utterly es- 
sential in the local communities. The development of 
the general sentiment towards an adequate primary 
system of nominations and secret elections is one of the 
hopeful tendencies of the times. But government in a 
democracy will not have completely realized its freedom 
and responsibility until the people shall have developed 
adequate means of publicity of all that goes to make up 
the political currents of the times. The machinery of 
government must become part of the possession of every 
individual if government is to be completely demo- 
cratic. 

5. Units of Government. — One of the extreme diffi- 
culties in connection with our democratic development 
is the number of governmental units within which 
each one of us lives. There are local units, state 
units, national units, and international relations that 
each of us must sustain in some measure. Among the 
local units are such as school districts, road districts, 
township organizations, village, town, or city corpora- 
tions, and the organization everywhere of counties as 
political units. In each of these units, local or general, 






THE POLITICAL LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 97 

there are a number of officeholders, each with the ma- 
chinery of office, and each depending upon the public 
majority for support, in every case. If democracy is 
to work out its best results there must be public control 
and criticism of the activities of officeholders. There 
must be public regulation of their duties and their ex- 
penditures of public money. And there must be an ac- 
counting to the public of the ways in which they have 
used their responsibility. 

6. The Franchise. — The actual participators in 
government are those holding the right to vote. Here 
democracy faces its severest task. By its own theory, 
manhood and womanhood suffrage is the only logical 
possibility and the fixing of an age at which the child 
is admitted to the franchise is a purely arbitrary affair. 
But the franchise is not only a right of the normal 
individual in a democracy ; it becomes also the duty of 
the individual to exercise that right and responsibility 
by taking his part of the work of government and ac- 
cepting his share of the time and the trouble and the 
difficulties which come upon a people trying to govern 
themselves. 

It is claimed by some that the right of franchise 
should be limited ; that it is granted to the individual 
by the state ; and that the state should exercise a certain 
fundamental control over the right of franchise. It is 
doubtless true that there are certain limitations which 
may logically be put upon the franchise, even in a de- 
mocracy; but some of these limitations and controls 

H 



98 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

which are ordinarily proposed are fundamentally undem- 
ocratic and are remnants of predemocratic ages. 

7. Branches of Government in Relation to Community 
Life. — Conventionally, we divide our governmental 
activities into three groups : the legislative, the interpre- 
tative, and the administrative. The legislative branch 
is, in large measure, responsible to the public will and is 
coming, more and more, to be merely the responsive 
agent of that public will in its progressive development 
of rules and laws of social action. The administrative 
branch is perhaps still more immediately responsive to 
the public will and makes itself active in the control 
of political policies just in so far as it does express and 
execute the public will. Present tendencies, both in 
theory and in practice, indicate the eventual merging 
of legislative and administrative functions in some form 
of " commission." The interpretative branch of our 
government, local, state, or national, — that branch 
which we call the judiciary, — is still pretty largely unre- 
lated to the common currents of social activity and un- 
responsive to the progressive demands of the times, 
claiming to be merely the interpreters of the laws as 
they find them. Most judges, trained as they are to 
revere precedent, find it very possible to interpret the 
laws in the narrower and more conservative sense of 
the words and meanings rather than in the larger and 
more progressively social sense. 

All about the administration of government there are 
insidious forces that seek to control the government of 



THE POLITICAL LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 99 

the whole people in the interests of some fraction of the 
people. From the standpoint of democracy, this is 
just as disastrous when attempted by so-called progres- 
sive elements as when done by reactionary interests. 
The only proper control of the branches of government is 
control by the complete public opinion and the social 
will. And it is certain that gradually government, in 
all its three branches, will become more and more the 
instrument for the securing, the carrying out along 
political lines, of the social will. 

8. The General Spirit of Government. — Democracy 
depends for its success and its progress upon the intelli- 
gence of the people. That government will, therefore, 
be most democratic and that democracy most progressive, 
where the most progressive educational agencies and 
forces are at work. 

Even in the midst of our democracy the prejudices of 
predemocratic ages still survive, and though American 
democracy has for the most part developed on a general 
manhood suffrage basis, there is definite opposition to 
the right of the average individual to share in the struc- 
ture of government ; and this expresses itself in the 
common opposition to woman suffrage. 

One of the maxims early developed in the history of 
American democracy was : " To the victors belong the 
spoils," and for a half century this was the current prac- 
tice everywhere. The general belief that " public office 
is a public trust," or that public officers should be 
honest servants has developed in the last few decades. 



IOO EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

Democracy still faces a long, hard, uphill pull in 
the direction of securing complete efficiency in its civil 
service. 

Locally, in every community the real democratic prob- 
lem is that of securing independent thinking along po- 
litical lines by every individual. Thus constantly the 
local community is at the mercy of the political boss, 
who usually has some more or less corrupt alliance with 
insidious financial elements and manipulates the polit- 
ical life of his community so that these financial interests 
flow constantly in his direction. 

Among the definite efforts that have been made by 
the schools for a number of years is that of teaching the 
duty of citizenship — education for participation in 
government. This is doubtless one of the great needs 
of our American communities. But it is doubtful 
whether it is a need that can be met successfully by the 
school's work alone. Certainly it cannot be met by 
teaching boys and girls the old formal school civics. 

Among the striking and hopeful phenomena of our day 
is the growth of the conciousness of the possibility of 
governmental cooperation along many lines. Munici- 
palities, states, and nations are doing great construc- 
tive tasks which formerly were thought to be impossible 
save by, and upon, the basis of individual initiative. 
Doubtless this is simply a promise of the day when 
very much of the public service work of the world will 
be done by the whole people through their governmental 
agencies. 



THE POLITICAL LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY IOI 

But in the midst of our growing democracy there are 
still to be found forces and elements that are inimical. 
These are all of the anti-social kind. They are to be 
found in the local community everywhere and they run 
through all our common life. They are the remnants 
of the social past which expected nothing of the ordinary 
individual but unthinking obedience. To-day, democracy 
is demanding of all citizens thoughtful, constructive 
obedience, and just as thoughtful, constructive criti- 
cism. Simple obedience, simple habit, simple thought- 
lessness, simple ignorance, — these are all fundamental 
obstacles in the way of democracy. 

The development of an education that shall base itself 
upon the native resources of the child and the commu- 
nity ; the growth of a public doctrine that the only demo- 
cratic good is a good that is contributed by all the people 
and is possessed by all the people ; and the development 
of that fundamental constructive social intelligence 
which shall no longer worship the mere past, which re- 
fuses to be the victim of old prejudices and habits, and 
which bravely faces the future, believing in itself ; these 
are some of the fundamental essentials to the continuous 
growth of our social institutions. Without this contin- 
uous growth and progress democracy is impossible. In 
the life of the local community is to be found the place 
where democracy grows or where it fails. In the heart of 
the common individual the ultimate test of democracy 
will be made. But it is certain that if America cannot 
develop that ever enlarging democratic life, then some 



102 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

other nation, some other race, will take up the task and 
America will become a chapter in ancient history. 

J. K. H. 

SURVEY OF THE POLITICAL LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 

i. What are the political parties, or interests, or factions of 
the community ? What are the cross-currents and under-cur- 
rents of political affiliation and activity ? What is the real pro- 
gram of each ? What are the sources of revenue of each interest ? 
What are the bonds, or "hopes" that control each interest or 
faction ? How much of this political activity is real and patriotic, 
and how much of it is bogus ? 

2. What are the financial interests and affiliations of the com- 
munity? Who are the political representatives of these various 
financial interests ? What is the actual object of each of these 
interests ? Who are the real persons behind each of them ? Are 
they local, or are they representatives of interests from a distance ? 
What are the various currents and cross-currents of these financial 
interests, corporations, and affiliations ? 

3. What are the attitudes of the people in general toward the 
payment of taxes ? Are public moneys being squandered or wisely 
spent ? Has the community an actual financial program looking 
ahead for a number of years? Who controls this program and 
the budget ? Are the larger financial interests of the community, 
corporate or personal, paying their due shares of the taxes ? Are 
any proposals offered toward reforms in the taxation systems ? 
Can the system of taxes be controlled locally, or is it a state affair ? 
What are the various rates for the varied purposes, local and state ? 
Do the people know what is becoming of the public moneys ? 
Has the community any means of checking up the public officials ? 

4. What are the relationships of the peace officers to the com- 
munity ? Are they honest and efficient ? Is the policing system 
of the community satisfactory? Are antisocial individuals 



THE POLITICAL LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 103 

handled in a fair and effective manner ? Is justice being done to 
all classes alike ? 

5. Is there any sense of class distinctions in the community? 
Is the community being exploited in any way so as to array class 
against class ? Are the political divisions of the community fair 
and above reproach, or are they corrupt and insidious ? Is there 
popular discontent in the community, or is there fundamental 
cooperation of all citizens looking toward steady community 
progress ? Are destructive economic forces at work in the com- 
munity? Is there a measurable degree of justice in the distri- 
bution of the wealth of the community ? 

6. What is the standing of the courts in the community ? Are 
the judicial officers honest, fair, socially intelligent, public spirited, 
and progressive, or are they mere worshipers of legal precedents ? 
Are there any insidious political or financial interests that con- 
trol the administration of justice by the courts ? Are the financial 
records of the various judges known to the people ? 

7. What newspapers and other organs of publicity exist in the 
community? Who are the actual owners of these organs of 
publicity ? What are the relationships between the various papers 
of differing political views? Are the editors sincere in their 
opinions or are the editorials paid material ? What are the re- 
lationships of the owners, and editors, of the papers to the financial 
interests of the community ? Is there any completely free organ 
of publicity in the community ? What influence have the papers 
in the community ? Is there any sort of corrupt alliance between 
the newspapers and the forces of political and financial corruption 
in the community ? Is there a political ring, supported by some 
paper ? Is there a political boss owning a paper and dominating 
publicity ? 

8. What organizations, or masses, of corrupt forces are to be 
found in the community? Are there any insidious political 
"clubs" making common cause with promoters of vice? What 
are the political affiliations of the liquor interests, if there are such 
interests ? 



104 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES. 

q. What are the political affiliations of the leaders of labor in 
the community? Are there any professional labor-traitors, or 
"go-betweens," in the community? Are the laboring people 
intelligent in their political sympathies, or purely traditional? 
Is there any tendency to differentiate politically along labor 
lines ? What is the strength of Socialism in the community ? Is 
the laboring man a socialist ? 

10. What is the general spirit of the community, democratic 
or reactionary ? Are there any really sincere democratic forces 
at work in the community? Are the public schools democratic 
in their courses of study, in their school methods, and in the product 
which they are turning out ? If not, why not ? Are the churches 
democratic in their attitudes, in their messages, and in their 
services ? If not, why not ? 

11. Are there any institutions of higher learning in the com- 
munity ? If so, how are they controlled : by the needs of the pres- 
ently insidious political interests, by some sort of "dead hand" 
out of the past ? Are they free to teach progressive scientific 
and social truth? Are they administered in the service of the 
community, or as private property of the trustees or regents ? 

12. What are the various reform organizations of the com- 
munity ? What are their affiliations, their programs, their sources 
of revenue, and their controlling elements ? Are any of them 
really democratic? 

13. Does the community secure to all men, — to all persons, — 
the opportunities for self-maintenance ? Is the community seek- 
ing to protect the workers against the evils and dangers of their 
work and against the industrial changes that come ? Is there 
public opinion in the community, and force in the law, sufficient to 
prevent child labor? Does the community attempt to prevent 
private monopoly of natural resources ? Does the community 
exercise any care over the health, the foods, the amusements of 
the community ? Has the community any sense of responsibility 
for the common welfare, or is welfare wholly a matter of individual 



THE POLITICAL LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 105 

struggle ? To what extent has the community government 
become the cooperation of all for the good of all ? 

14. What is being done for the actual civic education of the 
community? Are there any immigrant peoples in the com- 
munity ? How are they getting their impressions of American 
institutions? Is anything being done to enlist the native social 
ideals of immigrant peoples in behalf of American institutions ? 

BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR FURTHER STUDY OF THIS SUBJECT 

Dunn. The Community and the Citizen. 
Hart. Actual Government. 
Smith. The Spirit of American Government. 
Addams. Democracy and Social Ethics. 

Spirit of Youth and the City Street. 
Hall. Immigration. 
Steiner. On the Trail of the Immigrant. 
Forman. Advanced Civics. 
Bryce. American Commonwealth. 
Roosevelt. Essays on Practical Politics. 
Roosevelt. The New Nationalism. 
Bailey. The Stale and the Farmer. 
Fairlie. Local Government. 
Hinsdale. American Government. 
Lloyd. Wealth against Commonwealth. 
Wells. Recent Economic Changes. 

Fawcett, Henry. State Socialism and Nationalization of Land. 
George, Henry. Our Land and Land Policy. (New York, 1901 .) 
Wallace, A. R. Land Nationalization. (London, 1883.) 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE DEVELOPMENT OF OUTDOOR BEAUTI- 
FICATION IN A COMMUNITY 

Naturally, all outdoors is beautiful. It is through 
so-called civilization that this beauty is marred to such 
an extent that there comes in time a movement for re- 
storing it. 

Think of the landscape that meets the eye in any 
portion of North America not sufficiently inhabited to 
form a community. The distant hills or the broad 
prairie ; the river or the lake ; the island or the valley ; 
the clear sky or the sky with clouds ; the sweet and un- 
polluted air; the majestic forest; the flower-decked 
meadow — all these are on the land as man gets it from 
its Creator. The development into the only real addi- 
tion of value — that through productive agriculture — 
does not seriously interfere with this outdoor beauty. 
The tilled field is sometimes more beautiful than the 
natural meadow. The waving corn has a charm all its 
own. Nothing stirs the pulses more than the ripples 
of the breeze over vast wheat fields. Productive agri- 
culture sometimes enhances, and seldom decreases, 
natural beauty. 

The farm buildings, often, as they ought to be always, 
embowered in green, with the garden attached, suggest 

106 



OUTDOOR BEAUTIFICATION IN A COMMUNITY 107 

comfort and that institution most characteristic of 
America, the Christian home. 

But immediately when a few houses are built at a 
crossroads there begins the elimination of outdoor 
beauty and the introduction of uneconomic, unsanitary, 
unpleasant ugliness. Often there comes to be a tavern 
at the crossroads, with its sometimes filthy surroundings. 
The country store is located near by, and a good many 
human derelicts adorn its vicinity, while tin cans, staring 
signs, and filth of all sorts gradually encroach on what 
little has remained of natural attractiveness. 

As time passes and population increases, houses are 
added, factories come, smoke begins, billboards are 
introduced ; a dead forest, hung with wires, replaces the 
live forest which may have been on the land ; the ill- 
considered, ill-kept street is lengthened and duplicated, 
and that American abomination, the shameless, unpa- 
triotic and filthy American small town, is developed. 

True, in this town some people come to live who care 
for better things. These plant gardens. They insist 
that trees shall be set in the streets. Sometimes they go 
so far as to believe that the schoolhouses in which the 
children are educated in a very small part of life's work 
shall have at least sanitary and decent, if not attractive, 
surroundings. The general aspect, however, of the 
average American rural and village community is pain- 
fully ugly, sadly unpleasant, and deeply humiliating. 

Thought may well be placed upon the decrease of 
actual value that has come about through this glorifica- 



108 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

tion of ugliness under the silly misconception that the 
man who destroys beauty is " practical." That man — 
and there are many of him — forgets always that he 
pays more money for everything he buys if it attracts 
him by its appearance. If he is shrewd at all, he comes 
to know that the things he sells bring him more money 
when they are attractive in appearance. He is a long 
time, however, coming to realize that health and self- 
respect are promoted by community attractiveness, and 
he has not as yet come to realize at all that the essential 
virtue of patriotism, upon which depends the security 
of his property, is promoted only by that love of country 
which has its abiding place in what is left of the beauty 
of the country. 

What I have been writing might have been said with 
much more strength ten years ago. There has been a 
great change, and it is the beginning of a greater change. 
Scores, indeed hundreds, of American communities 
desire to be bettered. Yet in that blind way too often 
characteristic of our self-sufficient Americanism, they 
are often quite disregardful of any experience save their 
own, so that in attempting to make our own better 
there has been but little shrewd consideration of the 
best things to be found in other communities and in 
other countries. 

Thus it has come about in very many cases that the 
desire to develop outdoor beautification in a community 
has led to the doing of bad work, to the spending of 
money foolishly, and to the accomplishment of things 



\ 



OUTDOOR BEAUTIFICATION IN A COMMUNITY 109 

that must be undone if the final result is to be satisfactory, 
efficient, and proper. Yet none of this effort is really 
wasted, for through it we are learning how to find and 
appreciate the beautiful. 

Instances might be cited without number to prove 
the value of orderly and well-considered outdoor beauti- 
fication in communities. It would be much harder to 
find instances in which the same sort of beautification 
had not proved profitable. Indeed, I know of no such 
instances, and I do not believe that any exist. The man 
who has a farm to sell finds that the pleasant surround- 
ings of the home buildings very greatly increase its value 
in the market. Those resident on a street in which there 
has been harmonious action toward real community 
service in the introduction of beautification, are not 
disposed by reason of what has happened to take less 
for their properties on an occasion of sale. The town 
which attracts the passing or incoming traveler by its 
evident desire not only to be clean but to be beautiful, 
never feels that the expenditure for such work has been 
in vain. 

But the development of outdoor beautification in the 
community can be, by taking thought, made harmonious, 
relatively inexpensive, and much more rapid. It is 
my thought to hint at a few of the items in a program of 
wise outdoor beautification which may serve merely 
as guideposts toward that deeper study that is the only 
sure way toward the best result. 

To begin with, the first fundamental of the community 



IIO EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

is its highways. These, alas, have usually evolved from 
the country road, and the country road has seldom been 
planned thoughtfully. Sometimes it is possible to 
amend these early errors, and to introduce natural and 
safe ideals in altering -highways or streets. 

The street must be considered, first, last, and all the 
time, as the means of access to and through the com- 
munity for its people and for those who come to it and 
who live along its borders. It ought, therefore, to be 
so designed as to serve well this primary use, but not 
permitted to be so diverted as to serve at all predomi- 
nantly any private interests. 

There exists a curious misconception with respect to 
the purpose of a highway. Probably hundreds of 
thousands of miles of roads in the United States to-day 
exist as if vehicular traffic was their only proper purpose. 
Streets in cities there are in which all the effort has been 
put upon paving, at great expense, the widest possible 
area of the street surface, utterly neglecting the comfort 
and the convenience of the people who live along the 
street, as well as the proper means of transacting such 
business as may even yet be done on foot! That is, the 
highway is thought of as a vehicular roadway only, 
and not as a place upon which to live, walk, breathe, and 
do business. 

In the study of community beautification, therefore, 
thought must be taken as to the purpose of the street. 
If it is designed to be a business street, then there can be 
data obtained as to the proper width of traffic space. 



OUTDOOR BEAUTIFICATION IN A COMMUNITY III 

London Bridge passes some two thousand teams every 
hour comfortably on thirty-two feet of paved surface. 
The great viaduct within a few rods of where I write 
handles daily the diversions and the transactions of 
probably thirty thousand people, on foot and in divers 
vehicles. It has twenty-eight feet of roadway, which is 
seldom crowded, and two eight-foot sidewalks, which are 
more seldom crowded. Some of the most notable high- 
ways in the country, as, for instance, Delaware Avenue 
in Buffalo, have barely thirty feet of traffic space, and 
not over five or six feet of sidewalk on either side of the 
street, the remainder of the highway being very properly 
given up to those important adjuncts to comfort, value, 
and health — good trees and good grass. 

So, therefore, the street should be designed for its 
use — the business street in kind, the residence street in 
kind — and there should be no senseless adherence to a 
fixed width or to fixed ideals, regardless of the use of the 
street. 

It has been legally held in many American states 
that the whole of the property between lot lines on any 
highway dedicated to the public use belongs to the state 
and is in trust only of the community in which it exists, 
for the use of the people of that state. Therefore every 
intrusion of private structures of whatever nature on 
the surface of the street is essentially illegal, no matter 
by whom this intrusion may have been permitted. 
The business of selling electricity for use through tele- 
graphic or telephonic messages, or through the making 



112 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

of lights or the driving of machines, is private business, 
and there is essentially no reason whatever to permit 
that private business to be conducted through the un- 
paid and altogether improper use of the public streets. 
The time must come when all the poles and all the wires 
will disappear from the streets. If they are permitted, 
as at present is the case, to be put underground on the 
public property, it ought to be under such restrictions as 
will cause the public service corporations to realize all 
the time that they are using public property for private 
gain, and that therefore they must render to the public 
an equivalent in service or payment, or in some other 
way, for their use of the substructure of the street when 
at last they are driven, as they must be, from its surface. 

Very seriously militating against outdoor beautifica- 
tion on streets are the conventional signs of various 
sorts, on the curb and elsewhere. There is only one 
proper thing to do about these — they ought to come 
off and stay off, so that there may be that equality 
which our much-quoted Constitution is said to guarantee 
to all. 

I have before spoken of trees. They are vastly im- 
portant on the streets of America, though we do not seem 
to think so. In Paris, where many millions of American 
money are extracted each year by purveying outdoor 
beautification to the tourists, a great business street, the 
Bois de Boulogne, is set with trees, the health of which 
is jealously guarded and scrutinized. When a tree seems 
to be failing, it is removed and a healthy tree put in its 



OUTDOOR BEAUTIFICATION IN A COMMUNITY 113 

place. It is found to be profitable to keep trees, even on 
business streets, in Paris. 

Vast help in the beautification of American commu- 
nities can be had by the well-considered planting of per- 
manent, and suitable trees, at proper distances from 
each other, and in the places best fitted to them with 
relation to the other uses of the street. These trees 
should be so planted as not to interfere either with foot 
or vehicular traffic . They can serve, and if properly 
handled will serve, to make the street far pleasanter, 
and they will most certainly serve to cover up or har- 
monize the heterogeneous heights and lines of business 
structures. That is, they will do this if they themselves 
are uniform on any given street, and not of so many 
varieties as to suggest a botanical museum. One sort 
of tree should predominate on a street, and the distance 
apart, as I have previously said, should be considered 
with relation to the use of the street and its width, and 
to the characteristics of the tree selected. 

Next in influence in the substitution of civilized out- 
door beautification for civilized outdoor uglification is 
the proper placing and the proper architecture of public 
or semipublic buildings. To so place a school or a city 
hall or a public library as to have it stand unrelated to 
any other public or semipublic building, or unrelated 
to any contiguous and satisfactory open space, present 
or possible, is to provide in advance for diminishing the 
effectiveness of the building in question. On the con- 
trary, to so place a public or a semipublic building, as, 



114 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

for instance, a church, as to have it favorably influence 
contiguous buildings or the whole street, is to double, 
treble, or quadruple the effective value of the building 
and of the street. 

This means, therefore, that thought must be taken 
as to the placing of the buildings, public or semipublic, 
on which the people collectively expend money, so that 
they may give the best results. Moreover, it is in this 
same connection most desirable, and indeed most es- 
sential, that the architecture involved be thoughtfully 
considered, not from the standpoint of loyalty to some 
local technician or architect or contractor, but from the 
standpoint of the permanent value to the community 
of the structure in mind. 

Those who read these words will be wondering why 
I have not before broached that which they have thought 
of as most directly related to community beautincation. 
They will be expecting that I shall speak of parks and 
gardens and the like. They will have in mind, at least 
some of them, the conventional public square, in which 
have been placed all the various things which some 
persons think are beautiful, but which so frequently 
make a scrap heap of civic inadequacy and incongruity. 
I have in mind, for instance, a public square in a wealthy 
city, in the center of which has been erected a monu- 
ment memorializing certain soldiers. Near by is a flag 
pole, taller and somewhat more ugly than the monument 
itself. A few feet away, at either corner of the little 
triangular central enclosure, stands a mournful memorial 



OUTDOOR BEAUTIFICATION IN A COMMUNITY 115 

cannon. There are several wire flower baskets and a 
few other odds and ends of miscellaneous city junk, 
which have been placed in the public square because 
some one thought that was the proper position for them. 

Or I am thinking for the moment of a city park, barely 
exceeding twenty acres in extent, but including almost 
every park iniquity that it is possible to get into such 
a limited space. An entrance of glaring architectural 
inconsistency, a building for the park keeper of even 
greater ugliness, horrible mounds crowned with meaning- 
less floral distortions, brick-paved roadways leading 
nowhere, a trifling little " Zoo " with a few anaemic 
beasts behind painted bars, and nowhere any utilities 
to give wholesome recreation to the people make up 
this dreadful spot called a park ! 

The public recreation places which admittedly increase 
the value of the community through beautification, 
are first of all planned to give service to the people who 
pay for them, or who ought to pay for them. Recrea- 
tion comes first. Tennis courts ought to precede flower 
gardens. A baseball field is vastly more important than 
a cast-iron fountain. An organized playground is worth 
forty-seven soldiers' monuments. Some green grass 
under good trees, with benches on which tired bodies 
may rest, and some comfortable paths, make up a park 
that is of far more service than an elaborate cemetery. 
The beauty we so constantly introduce in American 
cemeteries is invisible to the dead, and well-nigh useless 
to the living. 



1 1 6 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

So I would have the public recreation places provided 
as contributing to the beauty of life by promoting whole- 
some play for man and child, far ahead of any costly 
ornamentation. I know of no American city yet rich 
enough to spend money on monumental structures, for 
no American city has yet provided fully and adequately 
for the recreational needs of its people to the end of their 
health, happiness, and efficiency. 

There is one form of beautification to which I must 
briefly advert. It is that involved in the introduction 
of gifts, in the way of fountains, or statues, or monu- 
ments, and the like. I have before spoken of the way in 
which a public square has been made ineffective through 
miscellaneous junk of this sort. I have now in mind a 
dreadful cast-iron horror foisted on a defenseless com- 
munity by a well-meaning woman, and of course ac- 
cepted by the community under the conviction yet. 
prevailing that anything which any one will give any 
American community must of course be accepted, be- 
cause all American communities assume to be objects of 
charity, too poor to provide their own adornments, and 
ever turning outward the suppliant palm of the mendicant ! 

There is another town in which thought is used in the 
acceptance of gifts ; where, while gifts are welcomed, they 
must pass muster as to appropriateness, architecture, 
and character. There they fully realize the fact that 
the giver of a structure to be placed on public ground, 
can in no case pay any considerable proportion of the 
real expense of the gift. The public must furnish the 



OUTDOOR BEAUTIFICATION IN A COMMUNITY 117 

abiding place for the structure and, what is far more 
important, the public forces this structure on the future 
public whether it be good or bad — not, let me hope, 
for all time, but very frequently for a long time. The 
American community which has begun to be self- 
respecting must therefore, if it is working toward out- 
door beautification, always " look the gift horse in 
the mouth "! 

Everything I have above written has been with one 
idea, and that is, briefly, that the way to promote out- 
door beautification in any community is to have a plan 
for the beautification and for the development of that 
community. I shall hope the thought will come into 
the minds of those who read these words that it is as 
well worth while to secure a good plan for a town as it is 
to secure a good plan for a house, and that it is again 
as well worth while to secure a good plan for rebuilding 
a town and for remaking a community as it is to have 
the best thought of the best architect toward the re- 
modeling of a structure it is desired to save. In the 
words of one of the most eloquent of the advocates of 
wise and sane city planning, I can say that — 

" City Planning is not a fad of to-day, it is a necessity ; 
it is not an extravagance, it is an economy ; it is not an 
artist's dream ; it is a scientific reality." 

Any community large enough to care for outdoor 
beautification is large enough to obtain a plan for devel- 
opment. It may be a simple plan, but it can be had. 
It need not be expensive in the getting ; it is sure, if it 



Il8 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

is a good plan, to be exceedingly economical in the de- 
veloping. It substitutes sanity and orderliness for stu- 
pidity and random work. 

Wishing to American communities the outdoor beauti- 
fication which will take them back toward the loveli- 
ness which excited the raptures of the pioneers who 
began at once to destroy it, I can do nothing better in 
closing than again to urge the study and the pursuit of 
city planning as the best possible means for promoting 
outdoor beautification. 

J. H. M. 

SURVEY OF COMMUNITY BEAUTIFICATION OUT OF 
DOORS 

i. What natural objects of beauty are to be found in the com- 
munity ? Is the community doing anything to protect and pre- 
serve its natural beauties? Have any places of beauty been 
destroyed in the past ? For what reason ? Are any such places 
of beauty now being threatened? Has the community a real 
sense of the meaning of beauty? If not, can it be developed? 
What influences, if any, are working to destroy the resources of 
beauty ? Are there any latent resources that could be developed ? 

2. Is the community blinded in any way by commercialism? 
Are the roads and streets lined with billboards that shut off the 
view of surrounding country ? Is there any marring of the trees 
by signs or any defacing of landscapes ? Is there no way of re- 
moving these marks of a commercialized ugliness ? 

3. What are the standards of the community with reference to 
orderliness and beauty? Is there any sense of planning in the 
city? Are the streets and boulevards laid out with reference to 
developing the beauty of the community ? Are there any beautiful 
buildings in the community, — churches, schools, or dwelling houses? 



OUTDOOR BEAUTIFICATION IN A COMMUNITY 119 

Are there any parks that have been beautified ? Is the taste for 
making nature over too highly developed ? Are the buildings too 
much ornamented ? 

4. Is anything being done in the homes or schools of the com- 
munity to cultivate the taste for beauty in the outdoors? Is 
there any feeling of necessity for such development ? Has the 
school done anything to beautify its own location? Are there 
school gardens and well-kept school lawns ? Is the school build- 
ing a creditable or beautiful piece of architecture ? Are the roads 
leading to the school ragged and unkempt, or has the community 
a sense of beauty in caring for its roads ? What is the general 
character of the home places of the community ? Are the farm 
homes well kept, or are the yards littered with rubbish of all sorts ? 
Has the community really developed a beauty conscience in ref- 
erence to its homes, its streets and roads, its public buildings, 
its landscapes, and its whole surroundings ? If not, what value 
is there in teaching consideration of beauty in the schools ? 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Eggleston. Home and its Surroundings. 

Eliot, Charles. Landscape Architecture. 

Roberts. The Farmstead. 

Scott. Art of Beautifying Suburban Groufids and Homes. 

Wheeler, G. Rural Homes. 

Kern, O. J. Among Country Schools. 



CHAPTER IX 

ECONOMY AND BEAUTY IN THE HOMES OF 
THE COMMUNITY 

Economy and beauty are to be classed together as 
among the things fundamental in the creation and main- 
tenance of a satisfactory home life. Family relationship 
in its mere animal form may exist quite independent of 
any special environment, but family life in its fullest 
sense cannot be realized outside a setting of material 
things which must yield a measure, at least, of both 
physical and mental satisfaction. Home life presup- 
poses a situation in which the necessities of life are 
administered amid congenial surroundings. It is not 
possible to realize such a situation, however, unless the 
members of the family direct their efforts harmoniously 
toward securing the maximum return in comfort and 
beauty. 

Economic Basis of Home Life. — The economic re- 
sources of the family must receive early consideration. 
Under the term income may be classed most of the means 
for supplying human wants. In other words, nearly 
all possessions represent the exercise of some sort of pur- 
chasing power. This power may be either money, 
labor, or discretion. 



HOUSEHOLD BEAUTY AND ECONOMY 121 

Money Income. — Money income, the nominal in- 
come, may be told off in current coin. Ready money 
affords a quick and effective means for supplying many 
wants, where the market offerings are ample and varied. 
Also where industries are highly specialized, where each 
worker puts forth but one product, or part of a product, 
money is necessary in order to obtain what is needed. 

In too many cases, however, the desirability of a large 
money income is overemphasized by those who are 
helping to form opinion on the subject. Little attention 
is given to the thought that no individual can be re- 
garded as successful unless he can serve himself in some 
degree at least. Also, that the unregulated spending 
of money leads to nothing but absurdity. 

Real Income. — The real income, as it has to do with 
family life, consists of money income, plus the power and 
the desire of the family to perform useful labor, plus their 
discretion and taste in the matter of spending either 
money or labor. 

The value of work carried on in the home as supple- 
mental to money income can hardly be measured. Very 
often work done in this way is not equal in money value 
to the wages which might be earned during the same time, 
and arguments seeking to prove the economic loss 
through the doing of old-fashioned home work are becom- 
ing quite popular. In judging of the value of such work, 
however, several facts must be borne in mind. In the 
first place, wages are earned by those who devote time 
and attention to a certain business, not by persons who 



122 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

can give only odd hours or half hours to money making. 
One must be a wage earner in earnest in order to have 
his or her time command a money value. The mother 
cannot well enter formally into business for profit, but, 
nevertheless, aside from attending to her preeminent 
duties to her family, she may fill a position of great 
economic importance through the proper administration 
of the affairs of her home. 

Again, it is not desirable that the children interrupt 
their school life in order to earn a few dimes at a child's 
work of doing chores. But they can, without doubt, 
add much to family confort through the doing of odd 
tasks so conveniently at hand in the home. Aside from 
these considerations, the assuming of small duties by 
children is of sufficient importance in their training to 
warrant the arrangement, even though the family 
balance sheet fails to show any other profit from it. 

The acknowledged earner of the money income, as well, 
will find, under most circumstances, both health and 
wealth increased through the cutting short of his hours 
of money getting, and giving a little time to recreative 
home work. 

The second point which must be borne in mind when 
the delegation of work is contemplated, is the fact that, 
at present time at least, services rendered upon a com- 
mercial basis are weighted by costs over and above the 
cost of the labor itself. The purchaser of such services 
must pay for the cost of administration of the business 
as well as for the service. 



HOUSEHOLD BEAUTY AND ECONOMY 1 23 

To summarize, then, work done in the home is usually- 
performed by members of the family who, for one reason 
or another, are not otherwise gainfully employed, or by 
the money makers outside their regular working hours. 
Also, the use of the home as a workshop entails little or 
no added cost of the product. 

Discretion in Directing Expenditure. — The matter 
of directing the expenditure of either money or labor 
is the most complex and elusive element entering into 
the administration of a home. Nothing short of a far- 
reaching outlook, and a careful weighing of relative 
values can be expected to bring satisfactory results. 
Senseless spending and short-sighted saving of money, 
random expenditure of time and labor, bring little but 
chaos and disappointment. 

A century ago choice in expenditure was greatly 
limited by circumstances. Money was scarce, and the 
offerings of the market almost negligible. The spending 
of money was an event. Food consisted of the products 
of the home garden and fields. Clothing was limited 
to the possibilities of the household loom. Labor took 
the direction of simple necessity. The standard of living 
of a given family corresponded very nearly to the 
skill and energy of its members. 

Contrast all this with present day conditions. Money 
is plentiful and the markets overflow with their offerings. 
The spending of large amounts of money is inevitable, 
for the reason that money is now the simplest key to 
much of the supply. 



124 



EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 



But even under these circumstances, the direction of 
the energies of the family remains of great importance. 
Two facts must be borne in mind : first, many of the 
best things of life are not to be bought with money. 
Imagine a nation, or a single family even, giving over 
all the joy of creative work, satisfied to live upon what 
money alone can supply. 1 

In the second place, it is only occasionally that an 
income is to be found that is adequate to support an idle 
household, and attempts to accomplish the feat with 
insufficient means result either in accumulated debts, 
a lowering of the standard of living, or in a premature 
breaking up of the household into supplemental money 
makers, — the last being the most pitiful confession 
of family bankruptcy. 

Beauty in the Home. — The matter of beauty in the 
home seems a thing apart from the weighing of economic 
values, and yet the beauty of utility ranks first in the 
canons of taste. The most timid householder may rest 
assured of one very fundamental principle, — any ar- 
ticle confessedly useful is, by the same token, possessed 
of the beauty of utility. It is only when the attempt 
is made to load a useful thing with alien ornamentation 
that it becomes grotesque. 

Again, there is beauty in simplicity. This is the most 
difficult to work out in this day of variety and super- 

1 As a matter of fact, money has no value except as it represents 
productive work. If, then, productive work is avoided by any consider- 
able proportion of the people, the value of money is lowered and prices 



HOUSEHOLD BEAUTY AND ECONOMY 1 25 

nuity. It is little wonder that the artist hesitates and 
rejects, giving his approval finally to the production 
which he denominates as " restrained." The novice 
may take the hint that beauty is more often a result of 
subtraction than of addition. 

Of all the rules of art, however, the one most potent 
in household administration is the rule emphasizing the 
beauty of consistency or complementary beauty. Two 
things, each one beautiful in itself, may be made to trans- 
gress all laws of taste through being brought together. 
The temptation to overreach in one direction is often 
very great, and the whole effect is thrown out of harmony 
in contrast. It does not follow from this, however, that 
nothing superior should be chosen until all one's posses- 
sions can be of like quality. On the contrary, such a 
choice may lead to the subordination or elimination 
of tawdry contrasts. The appreciation of true beauty 
will again lead back to simplicity. 

These three things, then, utility, simplicity, and 
consistency, remain as safe ground, no matter how great 
variations may exist in standards of taste. 

Harmony in the General Apportionment of Family 
Resources. — The consummation of economy and beauty 
in the home waits, in all cases, for a harmonious direction 
of resources. Considerable attention has been given by 
students of home economics to the matter of dividing 
the money income, assigning certain percentages to the 
accounts of food, shelter, clothing, education, amuse- 
ment, etc., seeking to call attention to incongruities re- 



126 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

suiting from unbalanced expenditures. Again, from the 
point of view of household administration, there must 
be a wise taking stock of the working strength of the 
family, before a given program of living is fastened upon 
the home. The adoption of complicated furnishings, 
or the insistence upon certain methods of doing work, 
often means the sacrifice of some one's personal prog- 
ress. Careful thought given to these matters will aid 
in compelling material things to contribute their share 
to the ultimate good of each member of the family. 

A. R. V. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY OF HOME LIFE OF A 
COMMUNITY 

What are the purposes of home life ? 

How do material surroundings affect the home ? 

Do the dwellings of the community serve the reasonable needs 
of their owners ? 

When is a house too large for a given family ? 

When is it too small ? 

Are the dwellings well kept up ? 

Do the grounds contribute their share to the enjoyment of the 
family and community ? 

Is any effort put forth toward securing harmony in the appear- 
ance of the neighborhood? 

In what ways may harmony be wrought without too great 
sacrifice of personal preference ? 

What part of the general upkeep of the neighborhood is assumed 
by the public ? 

What are the advantages of public control of improvements ? 

What are the disadvantages ? 

What is the general economic status of the community ? 



HOUSEHOLD BEAUTY AND ECONOMY 1 27 

Are any of the families possessed of great wealth ? 

Are any very poor ? 

Is the general standard of living high or low ? 

How does the community standard affect the standard in a given 
home? 

Note cases where lack of training in home management results 
in a low standard of living. 

What costs are involved in such home work as the baking of 
bread, for example ? 

What costs are included in the price paid for a loaf at the baker's ? 

Are the homes of the community supported normally ; that 
is, are the earners of the money income of mature age and re- 
lieved of the personal care of young children ? 

Is the housekeeping normally administered by interested mem- 
bers of the family ? 

Are there noticeable consequences in cases where the homes are 
not thus normally supported or administered ? 

Does surplus money go noticeably in any one of the following 
directions : improvement of the home, food, dress, furnishings, 
public amusements, private entertainment, education, travel, 
church and charity, social service, savings ? 

Note cases in which a reasonable division of expenditure is 
evident. Are these homes successful ? 

In case you wished to improve the general effect in house fur- 
nishings noted, would the first move be to add to or take from ? 

Study cases where good taste has been of economic value in 
matters of clothing, food, furnishings, etc., — cases where there 
has been an actual saving of either time, labor, or money. 

What compromises might be effected between fashion and 
economy in all these matters ? 

Is there any vital relation between fashion and beauty ? 

What sort of social life is provided for in the homes ? 

Are the children given a share in the responsibilities and pleasures 
of hospitality ? 



128 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

Study the findings of any local organization having for then- 
purpose a serious consideration of the affairs of the home. 

What recognition does the school give of the work or educational 
influence of the home ? 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Periodicals 

Journal of Home Economics. Baltimore. 

American Journal of Sociology. Chicago. 

The Independent. New York. 

The Outlook. New York. 

Atlantic Monthly. Boston. 

American Magazine. New York. 

Craftsman. New York. 

Good Housekeeping. Springfield, Mass. 

The Delineator. New York. 

House Beautiful. New York. 

Woman's Home Companion. New York. 

Note. — The above list is far from being complete. There is 
no question but that the home is, just now, in a transitional state, 
and articles dealing with the various phases of the situation are 
to be found in all periodicals of thoughtful character. 

Books 

Streightoef, Frank Hatch. The Standard of Living among the 
Industrial People of America. (An excellent piece of work.) 

Rosanquet, Mrs. The Standard of Life. 

Richards, Mrs. E. H. The Cost of Living. 

Richards, Mrs. E. H. The Cost of Food. 

Brown, Mary Wilcox. The Development of Thrift. 

Annual and Special Reports of the Commissioner of Labor. United 
States Bureau of Commerce and Labor. Washington, D.C. 



HOUSEHOLD BEAUTY AND ECONOMY 120, 

Richardson, Bertha J. The Woman Who Spends. (Boston.) 

Devtne, Edward. Economic Function of Woman. 

Campbell, Helen. Household Economics. 

Hunt. Caroline. Home Problems from a New Standpoint. 

Bevier, Isabel, and Usher, Susannah. The Home Economics 
Movement. 

Rosanquet, Mrs. The Family. 

Hard, Willlui. The Women of To-morrow. 

Wilbur, Mary A. Everyday Business for Women. 

Earle, Mrs. Alice M. Home Life in Colonial Days. 

Earle, Mrs. Alice M. Customs and Fashions of Old New Eng- 
land. 

Ely, Richard T. Evolution of Industrial Society. 

Bevier, Isabel. The House. 

Weaver, Lawrence. The House and its Equipment. 

Weaver, Lawrence. Small Country Houses of To-day. 

Briggs, R. A. The Essentials of a Country House. 

Richards, Mrs., and Talbot, Miss. Home Sanitation. 

Gerhard, W. P. House Draining and Sanitary Plumbing. 

Ornsbee, Agnes B. The House Comfortable. 

Wheeler, C and ace. Household Art. 

Kellogg, A. M. Home Furnishing. 

Wheeler, Candace. Principles of Decoration. 

Morris, William. Arts and Crafts, Essays. 

Eastlake. Hints on Household Taste. 

Ruskin. Two Paths in Art. 

Hutchinson. Food and the Principles of Dietetics. 

Richards, Mrs. E. H. Food Materials and their Adulterations. 

Leach. Food Inspection and Analysis. 

Prudden. Dust and its Dangers. 

Hutchinson, Woods. Handbook of Health. 

United States Department of Agriculture. Farmers' Bulletins on 
Food. (Free.) 

Salmon, Lucy M. Domestic Service. 



I30 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

Harrison, Eveleen. Home Nursing. 

Brown, Daniel Rollins, M.D. The Baby. 

Tracy, Susan E. Studies in Invalid Occupation. 

McKeever, William A. Farm Boys and Girls. 

Hall, G. Stanley. Youth, Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene. 

Higgins, Myrta M. Little Gardens for Boys and Girls. 

Hapgood, George. Home Games. 

Kinne, Helen. Equipment for Teaching Domestic Science. 

Note. — References lacking the name of the publisher can be 
obtained, in most cases, by addressing any one of the publishing 
houses. 



CHAPTER X 

THE GENERAL SOCIAL LIFE OF THE COM- 
MUNITY 

This subject is fairly inclusive of all that is proposed 
in this whole book ; and broadly speaking, much of what 
has been done in the other chapters might very well have 
been included here. But the life of the community has 
distinctive aspects within its organic unity, and there is 
room — and need — for a careful constructive study 
of the life of the community from the standpoint of its 
social interests, using the word in its narrower sense. 
There is a social life in many village and rural communi- 
ties that is utterly unknown in many others, perhaps 
in most. Industrial developments tend to dwarf the 
thought of social life, and in many communities the 
social instincts are almost wholly gone. In their place 
has come a sort of rural paganism that is almost wholly 
materialistic in interest, in effort, and in outcome. 

This is particularly presented in Chapter XII. Over 
against this moral defect of community life there is set 
forth in Chapter XI the constructive program for play 
and recreation. But this program does not exhaust the 
possibilities of community social construction. Com- 
munity play and recreation must, of course, come into 
existence in our American life as it has been in existence 

131 



132 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

for centuries in European communities. But commu- 
nity play is not the whole of social life. Children are 
social from the first, and they become more and more 
social until the culmination of life in the little society 
of the new home with its growing world of responsibil- 
ities, cares, and outlooks. Much of this common social 
life and interest was manifested in the neighborhood 
" parties " of the rural regions of our earlier American 
life, — meetings that have been largely superseded by 
other forms of expression. Those older " parties " took 
the form of dances, " surprise parties," where some one 
was taken by surprise on his birthday, and in some com- 
munities there were card parties. In many communi- 
ties where a certain restraint was set up by religious in- 
terests, dances and card parties were not permitted ; 
so, all too frequently, the social gatherings degenerated 
into insipid and frittering forms of games, " kissing 
games," and the like. Courtship was accepted as a part 
of the implicit meaning of the gathering, but it was a 
source of considerable coarse discussion and even vulgar 
" horse play." 

The modern rural and village community is facing its 
greatest constructive problem on this social side. In- 
dustry is becoming divorced from the actual motives 
of life in many country communities quite as much as in 
the cities. Boys and girls are working for money as 
formerly they did not do in the country districts. They 
have money to spend ; they have means of communica- 
tion for the making of social plans; they have means 



THE GENERAL SOCIAL LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 133 

of making quick trips to all parts of the community and 
to larger distant towns ; in place of the older neighbor- 
hood gatherings there is much " going to town " for an 
evening, especially for Saturday evenings. The older 
community customs have broken down ; city ways of 
spending the social hours have come in, and some of the 
old-time sincerities have passed away with the greater 
sophistication of the farm and the village. 

There is no doubt that a larger and finer and better 
life is needed in such communities. It is coming. But 
its coming should not be dominated by city thinking, 
or patterned upon city ways of doing. The great prob- 
lem is that of conserving the real social resources of the 
local community itself ; and this conserving process must 
take place within the community, by the intelligence of 
the community itself. Of course, the intelligence of 
the whole world belongs to the community, if the com- 
munity can use it. The great difficulty is found in the 
fact that our rural and village communities are schooled 
to despise their own resources, both social and intel- 
lectual, and to believe that nothing is worth while that 
does not come with the city's stamp of approval on it. 

The social leader of the rural and village community 
occupies a most important place in the life of the nation. 
The country problem is a most vital problem, and it is 
essentially a problem of the health or decadence of the 
social life of the community. Under all else that con- 
cerns us as human beings lie the great social instincts. 
If these are provided for in healthy, generous, pure, and 



134 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

satisfying forms, the call of the city will lose its power. 
But if these are not provided for, the city's call will be- 
come insistent ; and the boys and girls will impatiently 
count the days until they shall be free to seek out the 
places of a larger and more satisfying sociability. 
Their own lives demand it. Their social interests are 
" symptoms of craving for needed exercise of functions " ; 
the country and the village could, by taking thought 
for their life, provide a world of satisfaction for their 
boys and girls, as well as for the older members of the 
community. Too often, however, these social instincts 
and needs are ignored or deplored and there is no recourse 
for the individual but to run the risk of life in the great 
" city wilderness " that looks so inviting but that may 
turn out to be the most lonely place on the planet. 

Social life, the meeting of people for purposes other 
than business (though not utterly separate from busi- 
ness), is one of the essential needs of the normal individual. 
Provision for it is a necessary part of the community life. 
No industrial development can be permanent without it ; 
no intellectual life is really possible aside from it; no 
art or religion comes to real meaning apart from it. 
There must be leaders who have intelligence enough to 
see and plan and foresee, — social prophets ; there must be 
provision in the community world for a healthy, broad, 
rich, and yet good, social life. There must be opportunity 
for all, old and young, rich and poor. In social life is 
bound up the common health of the whole community. 

The teachers, ministers, lawyers, and other professional 






THE GENERAL SOCIAL LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 135 

men and women of the community need to feel their 
responsibility at this point. This is especially true of the 
teacher and minister. Their equipment for their work 
should include skill in the leadership of the social func- 
tions of their communities. But such leadership must 
be of the forces that are already at work. It must not 
be snobbish or superior in attitude. 

There should be an adequate supply of ideas as to ways 
of spending the hours of social gatherings. Eating, 
playing games, guessing contests, cards, dancing, music, 
"stunts," conversation, excitements: how shall the 
hours of a social gathering be spent? Health must be 
enlarged, vitality increased, emotions deepened, tensions 
of life relaxed, pleasures renewed, friends brought closer, 
hopes made more genuine, and faith in life and humanity 
strengthened. Here is religion ; here is education ; here 
are the gates of life itself. The community conscious- 
ness may be increased or destroyed by these hours. 
How shall they be spent ? 

The whole community must share in the social life. 
We are breaking up our social experiences in two great 
directions, and like all breakings, these leave us without 
a real world in which to live. We are breaking up our 
world into the two classes of " those who belong " and 
"those who have not arrived." This is a serious break, 
since it prevents each group from having a real social 
life. But perhaps there is a more serious break : the 
horizontal break between the children and the adults. 
Never before perhaps in the world have the children of 



136 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

the community been released so completely from both 
adult cooperation and adult criticism and control in their 
social life. This is especially to be noted in connection 
with the questions of courtship. We have developed 
a rather curious idea that courtship is fundamentally 
the concern of the two persons most absorbed in the pro- 
cess. But the primitive world knew better. Courtship, 
though it seems to be wholly personal, is really more a 
social concern than personal, and in its fundamental es- 
sence it is as much a part of the cosmic process as are 
the movements of the stars. It is personal, of course; 
but its full personal meanings, as distinct from the mere 
mating of the animals, can be understood and assured 
only as courtship rises to the level of a social concern 
and has thrown about it the assurance of social signifi- 
cance and control. 

Let us sum it all up by saying that the social life of the 
community needs a common center, or centers. The 
schoolhouse, or the church, some public building, owned 
by the community, should be made this common center. 
Here community interest and control should centralize 
all the essential social activities of the whole community. 
Here the children should meet for their games and play, 
in the gymnasium or the community playfield. Here 
the older people should come for their community meet- 
ings, their political gatherings, their industrial associa- 
tions, their religious meetings, and their neighborly 
communions. Here the young men and women should 
have their parties and their fun, frankly recognized as 



THE GENERAL SOCIAL LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 137 

a part of the community life, and the promise of the 
future life of the community. Over against the moral 
and social deficiencies that may be, or have been, in the 
community, here should gather the constructive social 
forces, meeting the insistent social needs of the whole 
community and providing healthy social commingling 
for all, according to their needs, and not according to 
their financial standings. 

This social center idea is the hope of the rural and vil- 
lage community. What these more sparsely settled 
communities need more than anything else is knowledge 
of themselves and of each other. The schools of the 
community need the reviving influences of the coming 
together of the whole people. The children need to 
think of their school as more than a place of torture ; 
this can come about only as the adults of the community 
come to believe in the schools, as they do not now be- 
lieve. All the questions and problems of the community 
life, industrial, sanitary, political, educational, moral, and 
religious, need to be seen in the fight of complete com- 
munity intelligence. All the lighter moods and the more 
primitive and instinctive needs of the community and of 
individuals in the community need socially provided, 
socially accepted, and socially controlled opportunities 
for expression, for exercise, for enjoyment, and for 
direction. The community social center, whether at the 
school, or in some church, or some building specially 
constructed for the purpose, the community's common 
meeting ground, shall become, if our intelligence rises 



138 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

to the level of our fleeting intuitions, the well of social 
life sending forth its health-giving waters to all the 
community, cleansing and purifying, destroying the 
evil, making fruitful the soil of community living for the 
growth of all the finest social virtues and skills, assuring 
us of that finer community life about which the world 
has so long dreamed and hoped : a community life into 
which " there shall enter nothing that is unclean, or 
that worketh an abomination, or that maketh a lie." 

J. K. H. 

SURVEY OF THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE LOCAL COM- 
MUNITY 

1. For questions dealing with the recreation and play life of the 
community, see Chapter XI. For a survey of the social and moral 
deficiencies of the community, see Chapter XII. 

2. Make a complete study of the social gatherings of the com- 
munity : 

What are the objects which draw people together in your 
community ? Where do they meet ? What determines the 
attendance? Who are the leaders of various types of social 
gatherings? Who pays the expenses? What are the "means of 
entertainment"; i.e., how do those who attend pass the time? 
What are the prevailing forms of social games, plays, etc. ? 
How are the social gatherings controlled ? Is there any social 
control of any sort ? What are the social customs with reference 
to these social gatherings ? Are there any social gatherings which 
include the whole community, old and young, rich and poor? 
Are there social classes in your community? What was their 
origin? How fixed and final are they? What are the effects 
upon the community of these common social gatherings ? What 
are the effects upon the individuals ? What are the relationships 



THE GENERAL SOCIAL LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 139 

of these social gatherings to the school life of the children ? Are 
these gatherings doing something for the children that no other 
agency is attempting ? 

3. What are the forms of commercialized social gatherings in 
the community ? Are there public dance halls run for profit ? 
If so, what people attend the dances ? Why do they attend ? Is 
the influence of these public dances good or bad? Is there any 
duty here for the community as a whole ? Are the saloons of the 
community social meeting places ? What is their social influence ? 
Are there pool rooms or other chances for indoor social life and 
commercialized play? What is the influence of these places? 
Are the churches or schools doing anything to counteract these 
social opportunities furnished for profit ? What standards of 
morality are maintained by those gatherings which are for profit ? 

4. Are there any influences that interfere with the neighbor- 
liness of the community? Are there any old feuds of a racial, 
financial, or social sort ? Has the community ever been broken 
up over any sort of question; e.g., the location of a schoolhouse, 
a church, or any other sort of public building ? Are there any 
lasting animosities between families, or individuals, such as have 
serious influence upon the social life ? Do any of these influences 
affect the life or work of the school in any way ? 

5. What efforts are being made to provide for the social life of 
the boys and girls ? Do they live normal lives for their ages, 
or are they aping the manners and fashions of the adults ? Are 
there boys' clubs and girls' clubs devoted to normal youthful 
activities ? Are the boys and girls catching a genuine community 
spirit and love in the midst of their common living ? Does the 
community mean a pleasant future and satisfactory life for them, 
or are they looking for chances to get away ? 

6. What is being done to protect the young men and women in 
the exercise of their normal social instincts ? What are the court- 
ship customs of the community ? Does the community exercise 
any real supervision over courtships, or does it merely hold aloof 



140 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

until some evil result appears ? Can the community talk seriously 
about these things, or is it still primitive in its attitudes ? Can 
anything be done to inform and organize public opinion, not to 
the hindrance or discouragement of courtships, but to the com- 
munity supervision of them ? 

7. What social gatherings have the men and women of the 
community? Are there women's clubs? For what purposes? 
Are these clubs constructive social movements, or are they per- 
sonal culture clubs, or gossip centers ? What social undertakings 
have come from them ? What social programs have they, if any ? 
If none, why not ? Do the men of the community have any kinds 
of social gatherings? Of what nature and for what purposes? 
What influences have they on the community? Have they any 
sort of a comprehensive social outlook or program ? 

8. What has been done toward organizing the whole social life 
of the community in a "social center"? What are the activities 
of this center ? Does it meet all the community needs ? If not, 
what further activities should be undertaken ? If nothing of this 
sort has been done, is it possible to undertake it ? Can the schools 
be counted upon to work for the general community life ? What 
attitudes will the churches take toward the matter? Where can 
leaders be found ? What are the social conditions that need or- 
ganizing on a higher level? To what extent have the school- 
houses been used in the past for social gatherings ? Are these 
buildings adapted to social uses ? Is the school board willing to 
permit the buildings to be used for social purposes ? Do the laws 
of the state permit them to be used? Can the school board be 
converted to the idea of the wider use of the school plant ? 

(For very full discussion of this subject see book by Perry, 
listed in bibliography.) 

9. What is being done in the direction of awakening public 
interest and attention to the questions of the social life of the rural 
and village communities ? Is there a " Country Life Commission " 
in your state ? What is it doing ? Is there a state-wide program 



THE GENERAL SOCIAL LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 1 4 1 

for community social development ? What part has your com- 
munity in it ? 

10. What is the attitude of the teacher toward the community ? 
Is she contented in the community, or does she count the days 
until she can get into a larger community ? What is the minister's 
attitude ? Is he bringing the bread of life to the community, or 
is he bringing the message of death by his lack of faith in the com- 
munity? Are the educational influences of the community such 
as to give the people faith in their own efforts, or are they such 
as to break down community self-respect and social interest ? 
What can be done to bring into the community the larger con- 
structive interests and undertakings necessary to make the life 
of the community wholesome, progressive, inspiring, and broadly 
educative for all the boys and girls, and the men and women of 
all ages ? 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Addams, Jane. The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets. 

Baldwin, James Mark. The Individual and Society. 

Brown, L. E. The Ideal Boys' Club. (Write to the author, 

Albany, N. Y.) 
Bloomfield, Meyer. The Vocational Guidance of Youth. 
Cooley, C. H. Human Nature and the Social Order. 
Dewey, John. The School and Society. 
Dewey, John. Moral Principles in Education. 
Forbush, W. B. The Boy Problem. 
George, William. The Junior Republic. 
Gunckel, John E. Boyville. 
Hyde, W. DeWitt. The Teachers' Philosophy. 
Jenks, J. W. Citizenship and the Schools. 
King, Irving. The Psychology of Child Development. 
LeBon, Gustave. The Crowd, A Study of the Popular Mind. 
Lee, Joseph. Constructive and Preventive Philanthropy. 
Mangold, G. B. Child Problems. 



142 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

Mumford, Eben. The Origins of Leadership. 

McCunn, John. Making of Character. 

O'Shea, M. V. Social Development and Education. 

Perry, C. A. Wider Use of the School Plant. 

Plunkett, Sir Horace. The Rural Life Problem in the United 

States. 
Parsons, Frank. Choosing a Vocation. 

Reeder, Rudolph. How Two Hundred Children Live and Learn. 
Rus, Jacob. The Children of the Poor. 
Ross, E. A. Social Control. 
Ross, E. A. Social Psychology. 
Scott, Colin A. Social Education. 
Sisson, E. O. The Essentials of Character. 
Tarde, Gabriel. Social Laws. 
Waters, Robert. Culture by Conversation. 

Note. — Especial attention is called to the publications of the 
Social Center Association of America, Madison, Wis. Full in- 
formation concerning books, directions for social work, and plans 
for community extension may be secured from this association. 



CHAPTER XI 

RECREATION, PLAY, AND AMUSEMENTS IN 
THE COMMUNITY 

Rural life consists of more than eating, sleeping, and 
working. There are leisure hours for most adults on 
Saturday afternoons, Sundays, and holidays, after eight 
o'clock at night, and for several hours daily in winter. 
Most children have much more leisure than this, and it 
is during these hours that companionship is especially 
craved and that something besides work is needed. 
" Isolation " and " monotony " do not strike in during 
working hours. The work may be hard and irksome, 
and may bring very meager financial returns, but it is 
no more monotonous than is work in any other vocation. 
As a matter of fact no other work in all the world can 
be more interesting or so all-absorbing as farming by 
modern methods. And where properly done it is suffi- 
ciently remunerative to be attractive. It is not the 
work so much as it is the unsatisfied cravings and the 
dreariness of the leisure hours that breeds a discontent 
which annually drives multitudes from the country 
to seek new homes and broader companionship in more 
populous communities. The sentiment seems to be 
everywhere : " Anything but this. How can I get away 
from it?" 



144 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

Yet national welfare requires that this point of view 
be changed; that instead of seeking opportunities to 
leave the country, people will ask : " How can we make 
conditions so attractive that we shall be glad to stay? " 
For it is certain that farm life nurtures leaders of men, 
and that national existence depends on a rural popula- 
tion that is numerous, prosperous, and contented. 

Now while a full and frank survey of rural conditions 
would reveal discouraging facts almost everywhere, yet 
it would not be without some hopeful features. Indeed 
we are on the threshold of a splendid rural renaissance. 
Better methods of agriculture, better business methods, 
and more cooperation will relieve the economic and in- 
dustrial elements of the situation, while a quickened 
church, an improved school, and a richer and more in- 
spiring community life will lessen the suffering from 
isolation and tend to check the rush to the city. 

In this renaissance, the recreation and playground 
idea will make itself felt as a powerful factor, and it is 
not putting it too strongly to say that a well-planned 
propaganda of recreation is as vital a necessity to the 
country's welfare as is improved farming. People in 
towns, villages, and in the open country need more rec- 
reation, and they need training in the arts of recreation 
and amusement. In many cases their quest for means 
of occupying leisure hours takes crude, uninteresting, 
and even childish forms, not infrequently is rough and 
grotesque, and altogether too often leads to immorality 
to a degree that is not generally suspected. So important 



THE PLAY LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 14$ 

is this matter of organized recreation that it must be 
taken up by the rural church, the school, the grange, and 
other fraternal orders, by clubs and associations. A 
splendid example is set by the Country Work depart- 
ment of the Young Men's Christian Association, whose 
secretaries are entering heart and soul into the move- 
ment with most encouraging results. 

As the writer has pointed out again and again, an 
adequate program of play would include pleasurable 
outdoor and indoor occupation for (a) homes, (b) day 
schools, (c) Sunday schools, (d) other social organizations, 
public and private, suitable for Sundays as well as for 
week days, adjusted to the season of the year, and 
adapted to the needs of (1) very little children, (2) children 
from eight to thirteen, (3) boys and girls in the adoles- 
cent period, (4) adults ; sex as well as age being taken 
into account when necessary. The word play thus 
broadened brings us into the realm of kindergartens, 
manual training departments, vacation schools, summer 
camps, boys' clubs, girls' clubs, nature-study clubs, 
camera clubs, collection clubs ; it has to do with swim- 
ming, boating, skating, skeeing, and snowshoeing; 
also with all forms of athletics ; with the use of tools and 
implements, with the use of clay, plasticine, paper pulp 
and putty for modeling ; with the use of tops and marbles, 
bean bags, balls and kites, stilts, toys, soap bubbles, 
cards, dissected maps, scrap books, and the myriad 
other amusements ; plays and games which are the 
heritage of the human race, and without sharing in which 



146 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

no child can grow up into complete manhood or woman- 
hood, and no adult can live a cheerful, joyous, well- 
rounded-out life. A fine course of study could be formed 
out of the play occupations given above, a course that 
would train mind as well as body, and that would give 
the best kind of preparation for life's serious duties. 
It must be remembered that learning to play well teaches 
us how to work well. 

The following indoor recreational activities are within 
the reach of all : 

1. Story-telling. " No home is so humble " says 
Richard T. Wyche, " that parents cannot gather the 
children around the fireside on a winter's evening, or 
about the doorsteps in the twilight of a summer's day 
and tell them stories." Here is an art that should be cul- 
tivated. Grown folks like stories, too. A farmer who 
usually had trouble with his hired help because they 
spent too much of their leisure time at the village bar- 
room, was so fortunate once as to get a man who had a 
gift for story-telling. As long as this man was on the farm 
he entertained the others so well that the bar receipts fell 
off and the efficiency of the men increased. Sitting 
around with their pipes and hearing him spin his yarns 
was a kind of recreation they enjoyed. 

But note Mr. Wyche's suggestion about the fireside. 
The open fireplace can work social wonders if people will 
only give it a chance. Lists of books on story-telling 
may be obtained of librarians or of the Playground 
Association of America. 



THE PLAY LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 1 47 

2. From the story told at the fireside to the story told 
on a stage or platform before an audience is a natural 
evolution. Dramatic societies should be formed in 
every good sized community, and where the population 
is scattered several communities may unite to form one. 
We are only beginning to sense the educational value 
of dramatization. Yet once it was the best if not the 
only way to spread great truths amongst the people ; for 
instance, the teaching of Biblical events and characters 
by the mystery and miracle plays of the middle ages. 
Note the results of an active village dramatic society 
in Oberammergau, Germany. Largely through its in- 
fluence there has been developed the most remarkable 
community in the world, a little village in a remote moun- 
tain district, which generation after generation continues 
to produce gifted men, superb women, and beautiful, 
wonderfully beautiful, children in extraordinary numbers. 
Oberammergau cannot be duplicated elsewhere perhaps, 
yet properly conducted dramatics will greatly enrich 
life in our country communities, as it has there. 

3. Clubs for boys and girls are as necessary in the 
country as in the city. Besides clubs covering particu- 
lar interests like photography, nature study, Bible study, 
etc., organizations like the Boy Scouts, Campfire Girls, 
Knights of King Arthur and Pioneer Girls should be 
fostered and supervised by adults. Here is where the 
country pastor may exert a powerful influence, as well 
as the country teacher. 

4. The grange and other fraternal orders, fire com- 



148 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

panies, literary and library associations furnish club life 
for men and women, and in these the recreation idea 
may well be emphasized. To such organizations the 
children must appeal for sympathy and help in their 
playground propaganda. 

5. Promoted by these organizations, communities 
should maintain lecture and entertainment courses, 
reading circles, a public library, and, where possible, a 
choral union. Then there is the stereopticon with its 
wonderful possibilities. No community or group of 
communities should be without one, and systematic 
provision for its use should be made. The old-fashioned 
husking bees and barn raisings are things of the past 
in all but a few communities, but why not bring back the 
spelling match and the singing school ? 

6. Church, school, and other socials should pay more 
intelligent attention to their programs of recreation. 
Social evenings frequently are uninteresting, insipid, and 
foolish because not carefully planned. They disgust 
and alienate instead of proving attractive and inspiring. 
On such occasions there may well be a serious core to the 
evening, a short literary and musical program, for in- 
stance, or a club meeting to discuss matters of commu- 
nity interest, to be preceded and followed by plenty of 
fun and amusement. Well thought out programs of 
entertainment, fun and recreation for all sorts of gather- 
ings in the country are greatly needed. 

7. Township or country gatherings, extending perhaps 
through several days, have been successfully maintained 



THE PLAY LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 1 49 

in several states. Most famous of these is the Hesperia 
movement, a winter gathering of Michigan farmers and 
teachers which has met for years in Hesperia, miles from 
any railway, to enjoy a program of lectures, music, and 
discussion from Thursday night to Saturday night. 
Mr. D. E. McClure, to whom most of the credit of this 
meeting must be given, once said, " Thousands of people 
have been inspired, made better, at the Hesperia meet- 
ings." Hesperia with its powerful appeal to the craving 
for wholesome recreation, certainly has induced many 
to stay on their farms. It is a signal instance of the effi- 
cacy of a properly conducted " Stay on the Farm Move- 
ment " which is far more important than the " Back 
to the Farm Movement." 

8. Itinerant social and literary meetings have also 
proved a success. Assembling by straw load or by walk- 
ing parties on a given Saturday, bringing their lunch 
and meeting in a schoolhouse, church, or village hall, 
people from several communities may gather with great 
profit and pleasure several times a year. 

9. Systematic effort should be made to teach plays 
and games to children and to instruct them in the art of 
framing up programs of indoor amusement. Such books 
as Bancroft's " Games for the Playground, Home, School, 
and Gymnasium," the Dan Beard Handy Books, 
Nugent's "New Games and Amusements "and Johnson's 
" Education by Plays and Games " should be owned by 
every school and church, and constantly used. Country 
children do not play enough because they do not know 



150 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

enough about play. Their repertoire of games is exceed- 
ingly limited, and their elders are even worse off than they 
are. Hence the importance of systematic effort to teach 
them what and how to play. The splendid work already 
referred to, which is being done in this direction by some 
of the Y. M. C. A. county work secretaries, who actually 
have gone from one country school to another to ask 
permission to teach the children a few new games, is 
worthy of emulation. 

10. Manual training, industrial and domestic arts, and 
nature study furnish much indoor occupation which 
has high recreational value. The making of collections 
(stamps, autographs, eggs, etc.) should be encouraged. 
So should be the making of useful articles for the home 
or school. Manual methods in Sunday school work 
are also decidedly in point here. 

1 1 . What has so far been said suggests the importance 
of having in connection with church, school, and home 
a definite storeroom or place for play and recreation 
materials, which should be treated with the same dignity 
as a library and should be as liberally maintained as pos- 
sible. In it would be kept not only the toys and games, 
but materials for constructing various articles, drawing 
and painting materials, costumes which have been used 
in dramatics, and that will surely come in handy again 
some day, pictures, projection apparatus, etc. 

Amongst outdoor recreational activities there naturally 
come to mind such time-honored sports as hunting, 
fishing, and camping out. It would be a good idea if 



THE PLAY LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 151 

teachers and pastors would preach the doctrine of the 
outdoor life, and if every community had a few tents, 
owned perhaps by the church or the grange, which could 
be loaned to those who, under the supervision of a wise 
leader, would camp in the woods or along some stream. 

Tramping and mountain climbing are also good sport 
where there are congenial companions. Europeans 
understand the value of such recreations far better than 
Americans do. 

The Boy Scouts and Campfire Girls should be organ- 
ized everywhere, and here again comes an opportunity 
for pastors and teachers which they should not be slow 
to recognize. The Corn Clubs which have become so 
popular in many parts of the country, and the Tomato 
Clubs of the South have also high recreational value and 
create strong community spirit and local allegiance. 

By the employment of such socializing agencies, 
country life will be made more attractive, and the siren 
song of the city will not sound half so sweet to our rural 
youth. 

So far we have touched on the more informal modes of 
recreation, the equipment for which is the world about 
us in which man and nature are playmates. We now 
come to that still greater and perhaps more important, 
certainly more social field of recreation, in which man 
plays with man, combining for purposes of recreation in 
numberless forms of activity which when properly 
organized and supervised, develop efficiency, build char- 
acter, and often fuse discordant elements into a homo- 



152 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

geneous, cooperating mass. In this more specialized 
field the recreational activities center at the playground, 
and here play comes to be recognized as one of the most 
serious and important concerns of life. 

One of the best things ever said about play comes from 
Mr. Joseph Lee, whom we delight to honor as the father 
of the modern playground movement in this country. 
" The thing that most needs to be understood about 
play," he says, " is that it is not a luxury, but a necessity ; 
it is not something that a child likes to have ; it is some- 
thing that he must have if he is to grow up. It is more 
than an essential part of his education ; it is an essential 
part of the law of his growth, of the process by which he 
becomes a man at all." All this is true for the country 
child as for the city child. 

But we must take a still wider view of outdoor play 
and regard it as an essential for adults as well as for chil- 
dren. We should never get too old to play, and since it 
is so universally important we must undertake seriously 
to provide adequate play and recreation facilities for all. 
Having caught the wider significance of the playground 
idea we shall come to recognize that the organized and 
supervised playground is as much a social institution as 
are the church and school. 

And I would here emphasize as I have elsewhere that 
play in the country is not so much to promote health as to 
develop the higher social instincts, to introduce another 
powerful centripetal factor into country life which will 
tend to counteract the expulsive features which have been 



THE PLAY LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 1 53 

so actively depopulating our rural districts. A very 
important result of play is the development of the com- 
munity spirit so seriously lacking in country districts. 
There seems to be so little to hold the people together. 
But once interest children in play, get them to organize 
teams ; design and make a good school banner, compose 
and learn a school cheer, adopt a distinctive athletic 
costume or even a celluloid button which is to be worn 
when they go to the next great play festival and compete 
with other schools, and there will be no lack of community 
spirit so far as the children are concerned, and the adult 
population will soon be catching something of it too. 

In country places playgrounds will have to come, if 
they come at all, through the generosity of some individ- 
ual or club, or on the initiative of some organization like 
a powerful school or college, or wide-awake church, or 
the County Work department of the Y. M. C. A. And 
they are actually coming in considerable numbers and 
in all parts of the country, and everywhere they produce 
the same social results ; that is, they bring about fine 
community spirit, awaken civic consciousness, and co- 
operation, and make for a whole-souled companionship 
instead of for individualism and isolation. If we can see 
the playground idea prevail throughout the rural com- 
munities of the land, the gain to the nation through the 
ever increasing number of cheerful, contented, indus- 
trious, patriotic citizens will be far greater than if mines 
of fabulous wealth were uncovered or all the commerce 
of the world were brought under our flag. 



154 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

Regular, supervised play should begin at the home, 
and how fortunate the children who have parents who 
are in sympathy with play and who will occasionally 
find time to play with their children ! Sand pile, swings, 
and other inexpensive apparatus are easily provided, 
and so are the chinning bar, jumping pit, and running 
course. 

The same is true at the school, even the one room 
school. Helpful literature is now available for those who 
are willing to take up this work. The country road will 
have to be pressed into service for some of the activities, 
but every school should have ample grounds, laid out 
and equipped for such games as volley ball, badminton, 
prisoner's base, captain ball, baseball or playground ball 
(the latter requiring much less space than the former), 
relay races, etc. Marbles and kite flying should be en- 
couraged, and so should Red Rover, leapfrog, duck on 
the rock, moving statues, and a hundred other games 
that are readily learned. 

Folk dancing should be revived in the country as it 
has been in the city. Here again manuals of instruction 
are ready. 

Teachers, pastors, and play leaders may make use of 
excursions, picnics, and camping expeditions as suggested 
above, but in addition to these, national holidays and 
other special occasions may be observed by holding 
pageants. There is already a generous literature on 
this subject which may be reached through the Play- 
ground and Recreation Association of America. The 



THE PLAY LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 1 55 

pageant idea for country communities has been best 
worked out by Mr. W. C. Langdon at Thetford, Ver- 
mont. His pamphlet " The Pageant of Thetford " 
is a classic in the literature of recreation. 

An essential phase of playground activity is athletics. 
These cannot be elaborate, of course, but if even in simple 
form the teacher feels unequal to the task, perhaps the 
country pastor could help, or some other adult in the 
community. If not, a call on the Y. M. C. A. County 
Work Secretary, if fortunately one is in the district, will 
not be without results. As has been said above, these 
young men are ready to do all they can to promote this 
work. 

The most important factor in promoting play in the 
country is the Field Day and Play Picnic, the great day 
of the year, when the country schools of the district or 
county meet at some central point and pass the day in 
play. Since the first Field Day of this sort was started 
by the writer in a little village in New York State some 
seven years ago, the idea has spread very generally 
through the country, and it may be said that the Field 
Day and Play Picnic has become an important rural 
institution. Its main features are as follows : 

A Country School Athletic League is organized among 
the schools of a county or commissioner's district to foster 
all kinds of clean athletics among country children, to 
teach them and their teachers outdoor and indoor games, 
and to bring the schools together at least once a year in 
a great field day and play picnic. For purposes of in- 



156 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

struction, circular letters giving lists of books on games 
and athletics, and other important particulars are sent 
to all teachers and pastors, while a number of games like 
prisoner's base, captain ball, and some relay races are 
published with illustrative cuts in village papers and sent 
broadcast throughout the county. To further aid the 
play propaganda volunteers are sent to the country 
schools to teach games and to help with the local athletic 
and badge contests. The matter is also presented at 
granges, institutes, and public meetings by aid of the 
stereopticon. 

Individual schools are encouraged to organize relay 
teams, and teams to play prisoner's base, baseball, and 
other group games, and to compete with other schools. 
Individual schools are encouraged to have their own field 
days, while groups of three or four schools are urged to 
have an annual meet. 

The grounds for the play festival, large enough to 
accommodate several thousand people, are proportioned 
off into several play areas. In one place there are courts 
for prisoner's base, captain ball, bean bag, toss, basket 
ball throw, and so on ; another area is set aside for base- 
ball or playground ball ; still another is devoted to giant 
strides, playground slides, merry-go-rounds, and swings ; 
nets are also stretched for volley ball, tennis, and badmin- 
ton, pits are dug for jumping, courses marked out for 
running and racing, a range laid out for archery, and 
many an interesting game or contrivance for testing 
skill or otherwise affording amusement is at hand here 



THE PLAY LIFE OE THE COMMUNITY 1 57 

and there to attract little groups of children, who wander 
about all day long in perfect delight from one interesting 
occupation to another. 

Provision is made for checking the packages and 
lunches of the thousands of guests, while water and toilet 
accommodations must be carefully and generously 
planned. Tents must be set up for those who are to sell 
frankfurters, sandwiches, ice cream, and soft drinks. 

An important feature of the occasion is the day 
nursery, consisting of one or more tents, furnished with 
cots, kindergarten tables, and play materials, a sand pile 
just outside the door, and appropriate eatables, which 
may well include sterilized milk in bottles, for the infants. 
Here mothers may check their babies free of charge, 
leaving them in competent care while they themselves 
spend the hours in joyous freedom. 

Carefully prepared programs are printed and freely 
distributed and trained play leaders are at hand to teach 
children and adults how to play, and to supervise the 
activities of the day. 

Balloon ascensions and other imported amusements 
and spectacles are strictly excluded, for this is a day of 
play of the people, by the people, and for the people. 
Thousands come to these occasions, and we want these 
thousands to play and not merely to be amused by hired 
performers. 

At one of these festivals "It is well worth while to 
stand at a place of vantage and watch these thousands 
assemble from every direction intent upon play, some by 



158 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

train, many on foot and horseback, and hundreds by 
wagon, caravans which wind their way from neighbor- 
ing villages and farms. Sometimes an entire district 
school comes to town on a hay wagon, with flags and 
banners flying and with its school cheer frequently in 
evidence. Just think for a moment what this means to 
that school. It shows that cooperation, fellow feeling, 
school spirit, community loyalty, and kindred virtues 
have been born into the pupils' lives, and that perhaps 
for the first time in their experience the social forces of 
country life have become centripetal and attractive in- 
stead of centrifugal and expulsive." 

It should be emphasized that a play festival is not 
just for fun ; it is not merely to while away leisure time ; 
it is not a mere picnic. The latter has its value and is 
not to be decried, but it usually grows out of no special 
purpose other than to have a pleasing outing, and it 
exercises no permanent influence. The play festival, 
on the other hand, like the ancient festivals and feast 
days which are made familiar to us through the Bible, 
is of purposeful intent and has an important mission 
to perform. Of course it consists largely of play, and one 
of its chief ends is the providing of amusement. But 
preparation for this day of pleasure represents months 
of effort on the part of hundreds and thousands of 
children and adults, and a great many by-products 
have resulted which are of priceless value. 

Take the schools for instance, — that is, those that 
are fortunate enough to be under the leadership of a 



THE PLAY LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 1 59 

good teacher. In getting ready to play their part in the 
events of the day the pupils become more closely or- 
ganized, work of all kinds has been better done, school 
spirit has been developed, and physical health has been 
promoted by participation in games and athletics. The 
school has become socialized. 

Then, too, at the festival the children may measure 
their accomplishments with those of children from other 
schools and find out just what are their strong and weak 
points. 

Then later the effect on individual lives. Acquaint- 
ances formed on these occasions may be followed up by 
profitable correspondence, by exchanging visits, and 
thus lead to the establishment of lifelong friendships. 
The names of those who excel in one sport or another 
become household words throughout the country. How 
this stimulates self-respect and ambition! The real 
leaders in each community become known, be they boys 
or girls, men or women, and these may be brought to- 
gether thereafter for organized efforts in worthy enter- 
prises for the common good. And all the time the 
isolation of country life is being lessened. 

Again, how easily may new and desirable features be 
introduced into a school or a community by these fes- 
tivals, and what an opportunity they afford for getting 
children to do the old things in the spirit of a new com- 
prehension and from a broader point of view. For in- 
stance, if play festivals become permanent institutions 
in a country and it is known that there will always be 



l6o EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

competitive athletics and games, then running and jump- 
ing, prisoner's base, relay races, and so on, will become 
permanent features in the physical lives of the children 
who are within the radius of the festival's influence. 
If on such days there are events which may be partici- 
pated in by only boys' clubs, then boys' clubs can 
thereafter be easily organized and maintained with 
incalculable benefit throughout the year. If there is to be 
maintained a competitive exhibit of home-made bread 
and cake in one of the booths on the festival grounds, 
then will it be easy to get the girls to give careful atten- 
tion to the art of baking. If a corn-judging or vegetable 
contest is to be held, then corn patches and home gardens 
will multiply and flourish. If an exhibit of photographs, 
programs, and printed matter showing the operations 
of men's clubs, women's clubs, Bible study circles, or 
literary societies should be made, with an intelligent 
person at hand to answer questions and give explana- 
tions, then will such organizations be likely to make their 
appearance in one community after another throughout 
the country. If there is to be an exhibit of school work 
in one of the tests, then all through the year the children 
will give more attention to the three, while sewing, 
gardening, bench work, carving, basketry, and art will 
find a deservedly prominent place in an increasing num- 
ber of schools and homes. 

Perhaps it is not too much to say that through a series 
of properly conceived and well-conducted festivals the 
civic and institutional life of an entire county or district, 



THE PLAY LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY l6l 

and the lives of many individuals of all ages, may be 
permanently quickened and inspired, the play move- 
ment thus making surely for greater contentment, cleaner 
morals, and more intense patriotism and righteousness 
on the farm lands and in the village populations of our 
country. Such, indeed, are the socializing effects of or- 
ganized and supervised play. 

M. T. S. 

SURVEY OF COMMUNITY RECREATION 

i. Make a list of the recreational activities of rural communities 
which have come under your personal observation. Tabulate 
them as (a) indoor and (b) outdoor, and indicate which are whole- 
some and which are bad. 

2. To what extent and in what ways are the church and the 
pastor interested in the recreation of the people ? The school and 
the teachers ? The grange ? Other organizations ? The men 
of the community ? The women ? The Y. M. C. A. ? 

3. To what extent is adequate and wholesome recreation pro- 
vided in the homes ? 

4. What provisions for recreational activities are made through 
(a) libraries ? (b) lecture and entertainment courses ? (c) clubs 
for adults? (d) clubs for boys and girls, literary, nature, corn, 
tomato, etc. ? (e) Boy Scouts ? (/) Campfire Girls, or other girl 
counterpart of the Boy Scouts ? (g) dramatics ? (h) music ? 

5. What provision is made for athletics for boys ? girls ? adults ? 

6. What provision is made for wholesome recreation for farm 
hands ? in mining and lumber camps ? for seafaring people when 
in harbor? 

7. What cases of immorality have arisen from the recreations of 
young men and women ? 

8. What festivals, pageants, celebrations of special days, etc., 
are held ? 

M 



1 62 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

9. What instances of street fairs in villages do you know of, and 
what is their influence ? 

10. To what extent are card games and public dances prevalent, 
and what are their effects ? 

11. What efforts are being made to supervise and give moral 
direction to recreational activities (a) by individuals ? (b) 
by town or school officials? (c) by interested parties from out- 
side? 

12. What efforts have been made to promote camping, mountain 
climbing, tramping, water sports? 

13. What antisocial forms of play or amusements are found in 
the community ? Is there any public conscience on these matters ? 

14. What are the schools doing in the way of promoting the 
educational values of play ? Is there any cooperation between the 
schools and the play activities of the community ? 

15. Are there any prejudices against play and amusements in 
the community ? 

16. Is the play of the community really a constructive element 
in the life of the community ? If not, why not ? 

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

Arnold, E. H. Gymnastic Games Classified. $0.75. (Pub. 
privately at New Haven, 1901.) 

Contents are classified according to the physical and mental 
qualities which each game tends to develop. The first classifica- 
tion is of games without purpose, the last of organized games, 
such as ball games, hockey, Chinese wall, etc. ; the intervening 
classifications are : general imitation, sense apparatus, accuracy 
of motion, steadiness of motion, accurate imitation, simple re- 
action, discrimination, judgment. 

Bancroft, Jessie H. Games for the Playground, Home, School, 
and Gymnasium. 

The games in this book have been collected from many sources 



THE PLAY LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 1 63 

and countries. It is, as set forth in the introduction, a practical 
guide for the player of games, whether child or adult, for all seasons 
of the year in both indoor and outdoor environment. 
Beard, Daniel C. The American Boy's Handy Book; or What 
to do and how to do it. 

A book teeming with clear-cut directions for constructing many 
things dear to the heart of a boy, as well as ideas for indoor and 
outdoor amusements. 
Beard, Daniel C. Outdoor Handy Book. 

An excellent book of outdoor games and pastimes ; full instruc- 
tions are given for making the necessary equipment for the sports 
described, such as boating, swimming, fishing, camping, sledding, 
and many others. 
Beard, Lina and Adelia B. The American Girl's Handy Book. 

This book is excellent for aiding girls to amuse themselves by 
constructing things of interest to them ; gives suggestions for many 
kinds of entertainment ; describes outdoor and indoor games for 
girls. 
Beard, Lina and Adelia B. Recreations for Girls. 

Many ways and means are described for amusing girls through 
handwork. Entertainments for special occasions are given with 
a considerable amount of suggestion for original plans. 
Burchenall, E. Folk Dances and Singing Games. 

Book of folk dances from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Russia, 
Hungary, Italy, Ireland, Scotland, and England, with music. 
Boy Scouts' Manual. Published by the Boy Scouts of America. 

Fifth Ave. Bldg., N. Y. $0.25. 
Campfire Girls of America Manual. Pub. at 118 East 28th St., 

N. Y. $0.25. 
Champlin, John D. Young Folks' Cyclopedia of Games and Sports. 

A compendium of recreation of all kinds. Adults as well as 
children will find it valuable for plays and games, athletic sports, 
mechanical and chemical experiments, as well as for definitions of 
terms applicable to the subjects in hand. 



164 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

Hoeer, Mari Rtjef. Children's Singing Games Old and New; for 
Vacation School Playgrounds, School Yards, Kindergartens, 
and Primary Grades. (Chicago.) 

Such games as London Bridge, the Muffin Man, Itiskit Itasket, 
are found in this collection. 
Johnson, George E. Education by Plays and Games. 

The first part of this book is a discussion of the subject ; the 
second part is a series of games judiciously graded for progressive 
use. 
Leland, Arthur. Playground Technique. 

An invaluable book for all who are interested in play. It con- 
tains many suggestions for play and the construction of home- 
made apparatus. 

Nugent, Meredith. New Games and Amusements for Young and 
Old Alike. 

Mr. Nugent creates for the boy of ten a magic world. The book 
contains wonderful soap bubble tricks, how to engineer yacht 
races in the clouds, how to make a circus on kite string, and other 
wonderful things. 
Schaefer, W. G. Games for the Schools and Gymnasia. 

The aim of the compiler has been to present a series of games 
that require very simple apparatus; many of the games require 
only space for successful playing. Diagrams in many cases ac- 
company the descriptions. 
Scudder, M. T. Recreation for Rural Communities. 

After a brief discussion of the social and economic conditions 
in rural districts with special reference to the expulsive tendencies 
of isolation and of unsatisfied social instincts, the author dwells 
upon the socializing influences of play and recreation in the lives 
of adults as well as of the young, and points out the responsibility 
of the several rural institutions, home, church, school community, 
fraternal organizations, etc., in promoting a propaganda of recrea- 
tion. Rich programs of play and recreation are outlined, upwards 
of 200 games are described, and strong emphasis is placed on festi- 



THE PLAY LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 165 

vals, play picnics, pageants, county fairs, and social center activ- 
ities. 
Spalding's Athletic Library. 

This library consists of a large number of booklets, ten cents 
per copy, which cover nearly every form of athletics and games. 
Those interested should send for a catalog. Address Spalding 
Bros., Nassau Street, New York. The following are of special 
importance in rural recreation. 
Chesley's Indoor and Outdoor Gymnastic Games. 
Gullck's Official Handbook of the Public Schools Athletic League. 
Official Handbook of Girls' Branch of the Public Schools Athletic 

League. 
Playground Ball. 
Official Indoor Baseball Guide. 
Official Soccer Football Guide. 
Official Baseball Guide. 



CHAPTER XII 

MORAL AND SOCIAL DEFICIENCIES OF 
THE COMMUNITY 

Each condition of life has its strength and its weakness, 
its elements of beauty and of ugliness. While much has 
been written, wisely, about the attractive features of 
country life, one who expects to make the rural com- 
munity his home and who hopes to understand and aid 
its growth must also face the fact that there are dark 
spots as well as bright ones in the field before him. Not 
all rural regions show the same weakness any more than 
all cities show the same efficiency. But whatever the 
community, it is well to have in mind the possible social 
dangers in order to meet them wisely if they are found 
to exist. 

It is a common saying that the social evils of rural 
life are due to isolation. The city has its problems of 
congestion, while the country problem is the outgrowth 
of isolation. Evil phases of social life are frequently 
the result of the massing of too many people for fit con- 
ditions of existence, but they may equally follow from 
the fact of too scant or feeble a population for vigorous 
and aggressive thought and action. There are rural as 
well as city " slums," and each is harmful in its own way. 

The danger of isolation, on the mental side, arises 
from lack of the contact of minds. It is in conversation, 

166 



MORAL AND SOCIAL DEFICIENCIES 1 67 

discussion, the exchange of ideas, the stimulus of com- 
mon emotions and purposes, that the imagination flour- 
ishes and the mind develops. And so it often results, 
in rural life, that the fact of the failure to bring people 
together breeds a group of sterile minds. The narrow- 
ness and intellectual decay of some country neighbor- 
hoods is a natural consequence. The great need is to 
break up the isolation ; to bring the members of a com- 
munity to realize that they really are a community, not 
scattered individuals. 

Even more important than the mental consequences 
of isolation are the moral results. Every region which 
has not developed some adequate forms of community 
life exhibits these characteristics. Suspiciousness takes 
the place of kindliness. Fault finding, bickering, and 
quarrels are the outgrowth of this unsocialized life. The 
family feuds of many country neighborhoods are often 
the expression of nothing but the emptiness of the life 
which has no common purposes and no common emotions 
and enthusiasms. It is the empty mind which broods 
upon little ills till they become great and are so firmly 
fixed that they cannot be dislodged. 

There is, moreover, a type of character which flourishes 
in isolation and is intensified by it. This is the selfish, 
individualistic character ; and as a consequence many 
rural regions exhibit an unusual degree of that lawless- 
ness which is the outgrowth of unwillingness to permit 
any interference with individual wishes. Extravagant 
individualism is usually insubordinate and lawless. It 



1 68 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

is hostile to social restraint and often lacking in self- 
control. In some places and under some conditions this 
leads almost to a return to savagery in the way and the 
degree in which men follow their uncontrolled impulses 
in disregard of all social customs and regulations. The 
restraining influence of social life, common understand- 
ings and ideas of order, are scoffed at, the result being a 
rowdyism which may be merely rudeness, but often be- 
comes drunken, vicious, or immoral. 

To offset such conditions the great need is for easy 
and frequent forms of social intercourse. It is absolutely 
necessary to develop the ascendency of society over the 
individual, to create a social atmosphere which shall be 
a restraining as well as stimulating influence. This is 
but to say that in the country if a man wants to live 
in a good neighborhood he must be interested in the 
making of varied social institutions and arrangements 
through which neighborliness may be exercised. One 
who enters such a community should ask such questions 
as these : What are the neighborhood institutions, and 
are they alive or dead? Is there a church or are there 
perhaps half a dozen churches fighting each other in 
the name of the religion instead of fighting the evils of 
isolated living by stimulating social purposes and aspira- 
tions? Is the school a place in which children are 
taught the elements of language and numbers, or is it 
also a community center where parents and children, 
old and young, meet for pleasure and entertainment, 
for athletic games and contests, for discussion and 



MORAL AND SOCIAL DEFICIENCIES 1 69 

intellectual inquiry, for interchange of ideas, and the 
development of kindly interest in each other ? Is there 
a grange or other agricultural organization, and does it 
encourage interest in scientific agriculture, in cooperative 
undertakings of an economic sort for the increase of 
the community's wealth and prosperity? It is upon 
such social interests as these that we must rely to 
counteract the mental and moral evils of the isolation 
of the country life. 

There is another phase of isolation which must be 
reckoned with. Young people are frequently thrown in 
contact with men and women of immoral imagination 
and speech, and this is more difficult to guard against 
than in the city because country associations are more 
intimate and more inevitable, choice being much more 
limited. Hired help becomes a part of the family life, 
frequently of necessity, and may be an evil influence of 
this sort; or a few evil-minded young people may con- 
taminate a whole neighborhood. To substitute for such 
vicious mental suggestion an interest in better farming, 
in athletics, or in any other wholesome and stimulating 
exercise of energy is a task worth the greatest effort and 
not impossible of success. 

Among the social phenomena which have attracted 
the attention of observers is the fact that marriages are 
made at an earlier age in the country than the city. 
This is probably due in part to the greater economic 
unity of the rural as compared with the city family, a 
wife being of special economic importance to the farmer ; 



170 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

but in part also to the lack of variety in mental interests 
which leads the young to settle down at an early age in 
the family social group. This is not a disadvantage, but 
at the same time suggests the danger that many mar- 
riages will be contracted, not because of strong attach- 
ment, but through the sheer poverty of other normal 
healthy interests. It suggests the great need for wise 
instruction upon the meaning of marriage and what 
should determine it. 

Another social condition to which attention must be 
called is the fact that many minds are unable to endure 
the monotony so often characteristic of rural life, so that 
insanity and suicide are consequences to be reckoned 
with. While the suicide rate is usually higher for the 
city than the country, the proportion of suicides over 
sixty-five years is greater for the rural region than for 
cities in the United States; which would seem to indi- 
cate the great strain upon the mind of long-continued 
isolation and monotony. Fortunately modern forms of 
communication are overcoming this monotony in some 
degree. The farm is not so lonely as it used to be. 
Books, magazines, newspapers, mail, telephone, and 
now trolley lines and often automobiles bring the farm 
life in touch with all that is happening in other parts of 
the world. But isolation breeds ignorance and igno- 
rance in turn makes for isolation, even when it might be 
avoided ; and so there is still the superlative need to 
organize agencies of social intercourse which shall bring 
neighbors together in healthful ways. 



MORAL AND SOCIAL DEFICIENCIES 171 

Rural communities often illustrate the extreme social 
danger of a vicious heredity. Due at times to the 
migration to the city of the more vigorous youth, or at 
other times to lack of aggressive competition from 
stronger stock because of the poverty of the soil or its 
distance from competitive centers, there frequently is 
found in rural communities an excess of degenerate or 
defective human stock. Such regions become breeding 
places for the many forms of feeble-mindedness. Idiocy, 
imbecility, epilepsy, and other inherited mental weak- 
nesses, issuing in crime, pauperism, or alcoholism, are 
fostered and handed on. As Dr. Davenport says : " In 
the rural and semirural population within a hundred 
miles of our great cities we find a disproportion of the 
indolent, the alcoholic, the feeble-minded, the ne'er-do- 
well. I know intimately several such locations and have 
seen, in one family after another, how the ambitious 
youth leave the parental rooftree to try their fortunes in 
the city, while the weakest young men stay behind, sup- 
ported by their parents, or earning only enough to buy 
the liquor their defective natures crave, and are finally 
often forced to marry a weak girl and father her im- 
becile offspring. Such villages, depleted of the best, 
tend to become cradles of degeneracy and crime." * 
The problem of clean heredity through the elimination 
of defective blood is certainly quite as vital for the rural 
community as for the city. 

This condition leads to the consideration of certain 

1 C. B. Davenport, "Heredity in Relation to Eugenics," p. 211. 



172 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

institutions which belong in the main to the country- 
life. The county jail and the county almshouse are 
usually rural institutions. Unless most carefully man- 
aged each is likely to be productive of greater harm than 
good. The jail, with its constant failure to separate 
serious criminals from slight offenders, and its use as a 
place of punishment in idleness, and of detention of 
persons awaiting trial, is typical of the laxness and 
inefficiency of social discipline and control of the in- 
dividual in rural life. The almshouse, though meant 
to shelter the unfortunate from suffering, is too fre- 
quently a temporary abiding place for the shiftless and 
degenerate. Here weak-minded women give birth to 
imbecile children, leaving them for society to care for. 
Here are collected the alcoholic, the epileptic, the weak- 
minded — every form of inherited defect, — without 
separation and too frequently with complete freedom to 
marry and carry on their weakness. There are few 
problems upon which rural communities need more to 
be aroused than upon that of the difference between 
wise and unwise charity. 

In conclusion, one who would understand the evils 
incident to rural life must begin with the fact of isola- 
tion. To meet these social evils the problem is that of 
finding suitable ways of community cooperation. There 
must be cooperation in agricultural business undertak- 
ings, cooperation in local government, association for 
recreation, for discussion, for mental stimulus, for edu- 
cation, for religion. A farmer is entirely dependent 



MORAL AND SOCIAL DEFICIENCIES 1 73 

upon his neighborhood, and so is simply driven to 
organize good social activities if he wishes a reasonable 
and happy life for his family. The evils which have 
been discussed will largely pass away if the young can 
not only be given a knowledge of scientific agriculture, 
but can also be taught the meaning of community life 
and mutual helpfulness. W. G. B. 

SURVEY OF THE COMMUNITY FOR SOCIAL AND MORAL 
DEFICIENCIES 

1. What is the general moral level of the community? What 
interests have the adult members of the community in maintaining 
higher standards of conversation, reading, social intercourse, and 
general social control of the life of the community ? Are there any 
gathering places in the community where idleness or viciousness or 
criminality of any sort is encouraged or permitted? Is the in- 
tellectual life of the community made up of matters of personal 
gossip or unkindly or improper insinuations? Are there petty 
feuds, neighborhood disputes, or partisan clamors of any kind in 
the community ? Are there leaders of moral excellence in the com- 
munity? To what extent is the moral leadership of the com- 
munity in the hands of men or women of questionable morality ? 

2. Are there saloons or gambling houses or other questionable 
resorts of any sort in the community ? If so, are they maintained 
because of the inertia of public opinion or are they maintained 
by actual public demand ? Is there any public conscience on 
these matters ? What is the influence of these gathering places 
upon the life of the school, especially upon the activities and con- 
versation of the boys and girls ? 

3. What does the community do about the care of its poor if 
it has any ? Is there a real humanitarian conscience in reference 
to these unfortunates ? What does it do about tramps or occasional 
criminals ? 



174 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

4. Are there any defective children in the community who are 
not properly cared for ? Are there any dependent children not 
under the proper care of society or officials ? Are there any delin- 
quent children not properly guarded and cared for ? What is the 
community's method of dealing with delinquent children? Is 
there a juvenile court having jurisdiction over the community ? 
If so, are its methods properly intelligent ? Is the school properly 
intelligent in dealing with moral questions that arise in connection 
with the school ? 

5. Are there sufficient means of social intercourse in the com- 
munity to prevent loneliness, isolation, and discouragement ? 
Are there any individuals in the community who are antisocial 
or nonsocial in any way? Do all the institutions of the com- 
munity — homes, business, industry, the church, the school, 
— contribute to a developing social life, or are some of these in- 
stitutions morally destructive ? For example : is business carried 
on on a high level of honesty and fair dealing? Is industry 
carried on under proper conditions ? Are the workingmen satis- 
fied with their conditions of labor and wages ? Is it possible for 
them to live a decent life in the community? Is child labor or 
any form of child oppression known in connection with the in- 
dustrial life ? Is there any vulgar ostentation on the part of the 
well-to-do ? Are the churches of the community helpful institu- 
tions or narrow and bigoted ? Are the homes of the community 
influential toward a higher social life, or do they breed antisocial 
influences ? Is the influence of the school socially and morally 
constructive in the community ? 

6. Are there any glaring distinctions of classes in the com- 
munity ? Are there any families extremely poor and others 
extremely rich? Is there a genuine democracy of neighborliness 
in the community? What is being done to promote the spirit 
of neighborliness ? What is being done to promote a growing 
democracy in industry or social life in general ? What, if any- 
thing, is being done to raise the general standards of living? 



MORAL AND SOCIAL DEFICIENCIES 1 75 

What is the attitude of the people as a whole toward the questions 
of industry ? Is work looked upon as evil ? Are there any in- 
terests in the general community problems ? Are there any com- 
munity problems — such as business cooperation, taxation, 
good roads, railway rates, educational problems, establishment 
of libraries, school improvements, community playgrounds, manual 
training and domestic economy in the schools, etc. — occupying 
the attention of the community in any way ? What is the general 
outcome of community activity and interest ? What is the repu- 
tation among its neighboring communities ? Is this reputation 
fair? Are all the moral and social resources of the community 
being properly developed, or are they decadent ? What new types 
of leadership are necessary to develop more completely these moral 
and social ideals and resources of the community? Can this 
leadership be secured ? If not, why not ? 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Graham. The Rural Exodus. 

Small and Vincent. Introduction to Society. 

Stone, Roy. New Roads and Law. 

Strong. The New Era. 

Thompson. Growth of the Town. 

Turner. Significance of Frontier Life in America. 

Henderson. Defectives, Delinquents, and Dependents. 

Henderson. The Social Spirit in America. 

The volumes of the Annual Reports of the National Conference 
of Charities and Correction contained many valuable articles deal- 
ing with conditions in rural and village communities. State re- 
ports of the same character are to be found in many of the States. 
Here also may be included reports of asylums for the feeble-minded 
and the insane and for the treatment of criminal classes. 

Mention should also be made of the Survey, a weekly magazine, 
published by the Charities Publication Committee, New York, 
in which may be found many studies of rural and village com- 
munities. 



CHAPTER XIII 
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 

Speaking from the experiences of ten years of work in 
a distinctively rural community, and three years in a town 
of some six thousand inhabitants, during which time the 
writer has visited scores of city churches, and through 
the nature of his work obtained a very fair knowledge 
of conditions in the city parishes, he wonders upon what 
possible grounds a rural church problem is so generally 
accepted as an almost national peril. 

The seven years were spent in a town of not quite 600 
inhabitants with six churches of various denominations, 
— one to about every one hundred persons. On the 
average not more than one of these six churches were 
closed during those years. Never fewer than two hun- 
dred people attended these churches regularly. Ours 
was a typical New England town in the proverbial re- 
gion of abandoned farms and summer visitors. Attend- 
ance upon church services with most of our people meant 
a long drive after two or three hours of work on Sunday 
morning, and after a long week of strenuous toil from 
dawn until dark. A careful perusal of any denomina- 
tional year book will show clearly that we have a na- 
tional and not merely a rural church problem. 

176 



THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 1 77 

This town I knew so well was merely typical of some 
forty-nine other townships of which I made a careful 
study in a house to house visitation. 

In my present field in a town of 6000 population we 
have seven churches and the past three years the total 
Sunday congregations in these churches have not averaged 
over 1500, and in this town these seven churches are 
all within the confines of six blocks. 

A recent census carefully taken under the direction 
of the New York City Federation of Churches revealed 
the fact that less than 50 per cent of Protestants in New 
York are church goers. Despite the increase of popula- 
tion of 270,000 in the previous five years, seventeen 
churches were closed while only fourteen Protestant 
churches were built. Not long ago Dr. D. W. Waldron 
made a thorough inquiry regarding Boston's religious 
conditions. He found that allowing for a proper con- 
stituency of three fifths of the population, exclusive 
of Jews and Roman Catholics, able to attend church, 
there would be room for all in the Protestant churches, 
and 21,625 empty seats. Similar statistics in many 
cities and towns prove clearly that the church has failed 
to gratify the crying needs of the human soul. 

Persistently, for years, advanced thinkers, — men like 
Bishop Potter, Washington Gladden, Josiah Strong, 
Dr. R. T. Ely, and Professor Rauschenbusch, have 
pointed out the churches' failures and mistakes, and 
the channels into which the extreme religious efforts 
must be turned. Twenty years ago Dr. Healy gave 



178 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

voice to the revolutionary utterance, " I should say that 
half the time of the theological student should be devoted 
to social science, and theological seminaries should be 
the chief intellectual centers for sociology." Recently, 
Professor Rauschenbusch pointedly made clear the defect 
in the old Evangelism, when he said : " Mischief begins 
when the Church makes herself the end. She does not 
exist for her own sake. She is simply a working organiza- 
tion to create the Christian life in individuals and the 
Kingdom of God in human society." 

My own experience with local and general governing 
authorities of the church has been that the one inquiry 
as to the success of any man's pastorate is, " Did he build 
up the Church? " — Not as it should be, " Did he build 
up the community, build character, thrift, muscles, and 
morals? " 

The church is conservative. It takes one step at a 
time, and often it hesitates overlong before it takes the 
first step. The old Evangelism of the Church has been 
overcautious. Human society has had to wade through 
2000 years of blood and tears, of terror and fiery death, 
before the simple words of the sermon on the mount 
have become at all comprehensible. 

After centuries under the tyranny of dogma, ritual, 
creed, and superstition, demanding the tribute and 
blind obedience of man ; — finally men of courage and 
vision throughout the Christian world have demanded 
a rebirth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They believe 
that the church must realize the seriousness of condi- 



THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 1 79 

tions, or go down to ruin. The new Evangelism says 
that religion is to save both the human soul and the 
human race. The soul is to seek righteousness and 
eternal life. The race is to seek righteousness and the 
Kingdom of God. 

Religion that does not apply itself fully to every side 
of human life cannot really live. Not only must the 
rural church relate itself to agriculture ; but the city 
church must relate itself to business, industry, banking, 
tenement houses, land owning, — in short, the whole 
of life, striking to the very roots of social conditions. 
Too long the churches have been what they were when 
Wendell Phillips called them the Great Apologists for 
every powerful wrong. 

In the days of vice, of crime, of municipal corruption, 
of shame and degradation, the regenerative activities 
have usually been led by men outside of the churches, — 
men inspired with a faith in God greater than that of the 
churches. The New Evangelism says, " There must 
be peace, not war, cooperation, not competition, a land 
where every man, woman, and child shall exist in comfort, 
not that millions should suffer from want on the one hand, 
while thousands decay with luxury and excess on the 
other, where every human being upon this earth shall 
have a chance to make the most of the faculties God has 
given him." 

This is the new preaching of repentance and the new 
vision of salvation, and as Ray S. Baker puts it : "It 
is to bring about in society at large, the spirit of the 



l8o EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

family at its best and finest. The cooperation of strong 
and weak, old and young, the service of all by each, 
and each by all, making of humanity one great family." 
" I came not to be ministered unto, but to minister." 
Rightly does President Roosevelt's commission on coun- 
try life lay great emphasis on the fact that the pastor 
in the small town must be a community leader. With 
the spirit of the Christ, he must in the spirit of the New 
Evangelism, realize his great field of activity. Filling 
the office with a profit, he must be the first to discern 
wrong and evil, and his vision will fire the souls of men. 
He must also follow behind the rumbling wheels of the 
chariot of state, and gather up the wounded and comfort 
the broken-hearted. The Master perfectly combined 
both of these offices, — the leader and the healer. 

It is estimated that four out of every five of our most 
prominent and successful men have been reared in small 
towns or rural districts. Some one says that to reform 
a man you must begin with his grandmother ; so we may 
say, to convert a city population and exert an influence 
on its best life, we must begin with the youth of our 
small towns. So if the minister in the small towns ful- 
fills the functions of his leadership, his influence will 
be felt in many places and times remote, as well as in the 
present day. 

The failure of country ministers in nearly every in- 
stance can be traced to their deserting their posts long 
before they had had time enough to impress their person- 
ality upon the community, and in reality assume leader- 



THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY l8l 

ship of which they must make full proof in the fields where 
they are placed, — not in a day can they win the trust 
and love of their followers. 

In a recent yearly conference in a Methodist Church, 
it was reported that fifty-seven young ministers of 
their number had quit the ministry during the year. 
All were recent graduates ; all deserted on the plea that 
they were not paid enough. Great leaders, followers 
of the lowly Nazarene, must display heroic qualities, 
courage and fortitude, in constancy. They must be 
willing to undergo self-denial and hardship. Most 
abhorrent examples of improvidence and poverty are 
found in the homes of many country ministers who 
have married before or immediately after their ordina- 
tion, and whose wives have become mere brood women. 
What could be a poorer type of love to be held up for 
an example in the community than that of a minister 
who is willing to permit his wife and children to suffer, 
not only for the pleasant things, but, ofttimes, for edu- 
cation, and the necessities of life. 

By far the larger majority of country ministers look 
upon their fields in small towns either as stepping stones 
to the city, or merely as a means of existence ; or a haven 
from real toil and struggle in their old age. The two 
evils in the problem of the church in the small towns 
which can be laid at the door of the minister are a 
spirit of restlessness and resigned indifference. Lacking 
the competition of the city and the inspiring effects of 
constant contact with men of their own craft the tend- 



182 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

ency towards idleness finds great growth; too easily 
the country minister forgets that his own dominating 
purpose must be to serve the Lord Christ in preach- 
ing the Gospel of the grace of God, and to look upon 
the souls of all those whom he is called to serve, 
whether in city or country, as precious in the sight of his 
Master. 

Too often the country pastor is tempted to try to be 
somebody else. Reading of the achievements of famous 
divines, sensationally successful in some new fad or 
movement, or hearing some eloquent preacher in some 
great gathering, the country minister in a burst of zeal 
feels called upon to play their part and not his own. 
The call which a man has for the ministry is a call for him, 
himself. A thing of supreme importance for him to do 
is that thing to which he is appointed, so far as his con- 
secrated powers will enable him to do it, whether it be 
great or small, obscure or prominent. The minister in 
the country, as well as everywhere else, will encounter 
among the people the most unreasonable demands and 
expectations. 

I have read of a man who, writing to a friend upon the 
subject of the kind of clergyman they wanted in their 
church, said : " We want a man who knows all about 
the enemy, has some capacity for working miracles, is 
ready, if need be, to be stoned, can teach the women, 
can interest the children, make princes tremble, convert 
kings, pick up sticks, earn his own living, go through 
fire and water for the good of others with no expectation 



THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 1 83 

that they will interest themselves in him, and, in general, 
lead a forlorn hope of dependent followers." 

This is a time when as never before the ministry is 
met by impossible and indefinite plans. Affected as 
the minister is bound to be by the spiritual atmosphere 
of his flock, only too often must he seek inspiration and 
real friendliness beyond the bounds of his parish ; in the 
country doctor, or lawyer, or the school-teacher, he 
will not only find the delightful intercourse of friends 
but some appreciation of his own worth. 

" Like people, like priests " is true in the very nature 
of things, once they are brought together as sheep and 
shepherd. Each is altered by the other. Where the 
pulpit effects the uplift of the pews, we find a successful 
ministry. Where the pews drag down the pulpit, the 
ministry is a failure. 

Where are the men to-day in the typical small town 
who demand a ministry of fire and blood and iron? 
Where is the church in a small town whose pews are not 
largely occupied by self-satisfied and self-complacent 
folk, whose passion for praise and admiration is like that 
of a drunkard for his dram, whose ideal of life is having 
a good time, who hate everything that requires thought 
or makes trouble, who see only the ridiculous side of 
heroism, and who can talk nothing but fashionable 
gossip ? 

God help the minister who has a call to break the 
bread of life to hearts as cold as tombstones, and in 
homes whose closets rattle with the bones of domestic 



184 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

skeletons ; to women who haven't the least idea of a 
moral purpose in life ; and to men whose wealth is built 
upon crushed and bleeding hearts. 

The strong minister in any place, if he can and will 
hold out, will eventually attract to himself strong men, 
and the unworldly parson who is proof against selfishness 
and religious indifference, will after a time have a con- 
gregation of devout people, full of faith and good works. 
" Like people, like priest " spells on the one hand to- 
day discovery, invention, free discussion, modernism, — 
on the other, sectarianism, shepherdless flocks and flock- 
less shepherds, tongue-tied preachers, and clerical 
disaster, theological fads, the destructive criticism of the 
Bible, and the revised Christianity of Christian Science 
and Spiritualism, religious indifference, irreverence, 
moral laxity, revolutionary socialism ; — the first sounds 
the death knell of the people, the second the death knell 
of the minister. The minister is a negligible quantity 
to-day, — the laity holds the balance of power. Sunday 
over, the minister is a cipher. If the pulpit can domi- 
nate and assume its full office of leadership it will survive, 
but a pulpit that is but an echo of the pews has no mes- 
sage because of which it should be endured, and a 
minister who has become like his people is one useless 
man too many. 

If the church is to repair past mistakes it must realize 
that its former policy of indifferentism, its devotion to 
dogma, rather than true righteousness, its worship of 
material things and its deference to wealth and power, 



THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 185 

have had their full share in the creation of just criticism 
and social unrest. " I came not to be ministered unto, 
but to minister " justifies the call for service. 

The church must abandon the idea, as Professor 
Devine says, that only those agencies are of use to them 
which they directly control and must rise to the idea that 
all agencies are of use to them in which their members 
do good work : " I hold it to be safer and more desirable 
that the eyes of men shall be opened to misery and in- 
justice and great human needs by the churches, than that 
such information should come from reckless agitators, 
from sensational newspapers, or through any other 
channels through which too often such information 
comes." 

The church alone to-day can fulfill permanently and 
successfully the social mission of Christianity through the 
dynamic power that comes from the life and teaching 
of the Incarnate Christ, just as almost every foreign 
mission is to all intents and purposes a social settlement, 
and just as the most successful city churches find their 
best congregations in night schools, in literary clubs, in 
trade classes, and in people's institutes. So the church 
in the small town will in many cases be able to humanize, 
as well as Christianize, the community by asking the 
question, " What do the people want that the church 
does not offer? " And in the small town as well as in 
mission fields, the church can meet and is in many in- 
stances meeting the crying wants of the people. 

Years ago, Dwight L. Moody said that the church 



1 86 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

must become the center of all the social, industrial, and 
religious life of the community. In many regions the 
vital problem of financial support must be met by the 
missionary boards of our churches or, as President Eliot 
advocates, by a large endowment fund especially for 
supplementing the local support of the church in the 
small town. In most rural communities the population 
is constantly shifting, and the majority of the people 
live on incomes where every penny counts, and these 
communities are justified as fully as any foreign field in 
seeking outside aid. While perhaps the minister ought 
to know how to get a living out of his farm, or in some 
other way, the average man cannot do it and still do the 
work of his ministry. But until the church at large 
awakens to its obligations and responsibilities, the 
minister must be a pioneer of the New Evangelism. 

" As every man hath opportunity, let him do good." 
In every direction the minister in the small town has 
opportunity to do good and in no greater measure than 
in helping solve the problems of the great cities. In 
every community there are abandoned farms, or ex- 
cellent camping sites, which through the interest of the 
country minister might furnish a host of city children 
a fortnight's vacation that would mean life renewed, and 
often preserved, for those little souls of the city street. 
In or near every small town the country minister can find 
a reasonable boarding place, with intelligent folk, where 
real sympathy, fresh air, milk, and eggs would be the 
saving of scores of city convalescents. I have found 



THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 187 

no difficulty when cooperating with the ministers of 
large city parishes, in finding just the right places, 
and always at a most reasonable cost. More and more 
must the cooperation of the city and country churches 
be brought about. Each can do great things to aid the 
other. 

One real crime of the minister in the small town is 
failure to follow up the life of the boy or girl who goes 
to the city. No minister has the right to feel that he 
has discharged his duty until he knows that every boy 
or girl going to the city from his parish is actually under 
the pastoral care of some minister in the new home. 
Even then, at regular intervals, he should ascertain all 
that is possible of their business, social, and religious 
life in the city. 

After ten years of work in small towns, I have yet to 
find any real practical need of the community which 
cannot be supplied. Through the State Board of 
Agriculture I have obtained not only abundant sugges- 
tions and advice, but real cooperation in teaching 
young and old a greater appreciation of rural life and 
farm work, providing of lecturers on pertinent subjects, 
the forming of garden clubs and holding of farmers' 
institutes. In many States, the Board of Agriculture, 
together with the State Board of Education, is meeting 
rural problems, ofttimes without even the cooperation 
or interest of the churches. In Ohio alone, agriculture 
is taught in 1900 schools. Through the Playground 
and Recreation Association of America, one can find in 



1 88 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

abundance practical plans and methods for developing 
through pleasant social contact in games, time-honored 
sports, and athletics, a more kindly community life. 
Field days and play picnics for country children of an 
entire county, with athletic games, music, and sensible 
amusements, meet the great need of play, more impor- 
tant in country than in city life, and will do much to 
counteract the evil influences of the typical county fair 
with its " phony " races and freak shows. On the same 
occasions small cash prizes awarded to farmers, who show 
ingenuity in devising new implements of work, or more 
successful methods of cultivation, are sure to produce 
real results. 

My most successful co-workers and assistants, whether 
as parish visitors, teachers of handicrafts, or night 
schools, or even as rural district nurses, have been 
volunteer workers secured by appealing to friends or 
some brother minister in a large city parish. In the 
labors of these men and women one is sure to discover 
true missionary spirit and rare qualifications for service. 
In all of our large city churches there are scores of 
persons of independent means, who, unable to answer 
the call for missionary service involving a period of 
years, gladly welcome the opportunity of giving three, 
four, or six months out of the year to the service of 
their fellow men. The most successful country ministers 
I have known have been those who remained long 
enough in their fields to have a better vegetable garden 
and more success in the raising of poultry than many 



THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 1 89 

of their flock. For evenings of amusement one can 
easily secure from the churches or schools in the nearest 
city excellent lectures on interesting subjects, and 
groups of accomplished singers or musicians. 

In cases of serious and prolonged illness, even involving 
some serious operation or a long period of treatment, 
I have never failed in securing a free bed in the hospital 
of some neighboring city ; I have had no difficulty in 
securing the aid of eminent physicians for one or two 
days in a community where one practicing physician 
happened to be ill, or had gone to more lucrative fields. 
In the dead of a zero night, through great drifts of snow, 
I have summoned to my aid overworked doctors from 
a neighboring town, and never once has my appeal 
been in vain. 

Through the nearest large city parish, the minister 
may arrange with very little effort upon his part, to act 
as the middleman between the farmer for the sale of 
his produce, and the many comfortable homes of the city 
parishioners. Among the summer visitors that have 
almost universally invaded every rural community, and 
whom the country parson has the right to consider as 
temporary members of his fold, one can find if he persists 
and insists, not only genuine interest, but active co- 
operation in his every endeavor to make better the 
community. No problem for the general uplift of his 
people need be too great for the country parson. I know 
one clergyman in a small town who was responsible 
for bettering the marriage laws and greatly lessening the 



I go EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

divorce evil of an entire State. I know of no small town 
where one cannot find a suitable schoolhouse, grange 
hall, or lodge room which can be used as a social center. 
In these days of church periodical clubs and theological 
lending libraries no minister need lack whatever he may 
desire in books or current periodicals. 

No longer, if the church is to hold its rightful place in 
the community, can we be satisfied with the typical 
ugliness and meanness of the church building in the 
small town, so often outwardly unkept and within ill- 
ventilated and dirty. I doubt whether any native in 
Christendom was ever Christianized through frame 
churches built in the form of a squash. I long for the 
day when the small town will build stone churches, such 
as one finds in rural England, adapted to local circum- 
stances, and according to local conditions as to building 
material. 

The church ought to be the sign and monument of 
all that is sweetest and dearest and best in life, — an 
abiding source of elevating, purifying, and ennobling 
influences. It is bound to be considered a reflection of its 
minister's standard. 

In any community the minister's first work is to know 
the place and the God of the place. He must realize 
that his kind of work calls for the highest kind of hero- 
ism, — the heroism of duty. He must remember that 
he cannot help men by asking too little of them. The 
trifling business of the church and the small gift of 
money are not sacrifices. The church needs leaders in 



THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 191 

the pews as well as in the pulpit, and when the minister 
demands something heroic, or something really well worth 
doing, then will men realize the place God ought to have 
in their lives and the church will have its necessary 
leaders and workers. Then will the laymen learn that 
there is no actual or real love, but service ; there is no 
true service, but sacrifice, the spending of life and self 
in the service of all : that is God ; that is Christ ; that 
is the Holy Spirit ; that is Christianity ; that is the 
ministry of every Christian man and woman. 

Christianity is both social and individualistic. The 
minister in the small town to-day must be imbued with 
the fact that both the man who insists on individual sal- 
vation and the other man who stands for social service 
are right. " This ought ye to have done and not to 
leave the other undone." 

The minister of the New Evangelism must mingle 
freely with the world into which the church must go 
(and no human interest in the world is outside the 
interest of the church). But while in touch with the 
spirit of the times, in running his church as a successful 
man runs his business, he cannot depend upon mere 
cleverness of management instead of the grace of God ; 
nor neglect prayer and intercession for the sake of in- 
fluence with the press ; nor lower the teaching of the 
church or its moral standard, in order to suit an easy 
and self-indulgent age, unless he would spell final ruin 
and failure and shame for his ministry. The voice of 
the Christ still rings down the centuries, " My kingdom 



192 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

is not of this world." Only a minister whose weapons 
still are faith, hope, and love and prayer, can fulfill 
his divine mission. It does not make so much dif- 
ference where as how a man works. " In stewards it 
is required that a man be found faithful." 

Happy is the minister in the small community; his 
lot is one to be envied through all his life and service, 
even to the rest that comes at length to all. 

" Happy the man whom Priest and Friend 
A few sequestered people call, 
Resigned an humble folk to serve 
In parish small. 

" Where books with thought, where fields with health, 
Where hearts enrich him with their love ; 
Where homes are pure, in some compare 
With that above. 

" Blest, who can undisturbedly thus 
His choicest years see pass away ; 
At peace with God, in love to men, 
Content by day ; 

" Reposeful nights ; his work and rest 
Alternate born ; sweet meditation, 
And usefulness, which springeth out 
Of consecration. 

" Thus let me live ; thus let me die ; 
The noisy haunts of men unknown ; 
Pass out of life, and at my grave 
A cross of stone." 

C. C. T. 



THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 1 93 

SURVEY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 

Are the churches in your community cooperating for the pur- 
pose of trying to reach and influence every individual ? 

Is some church responsible for every square mile ? 

Is the community overchurched ? 

How many churches, and for what populations ? 

How long has been the average pastorate in each church for 
the past ten years ? 

Is the general emphasis on the church itself or on the work to 
be done by the church for all men ? 

For what reason have the pastors, if any, resigned their charges 
within recent years ? 

Do the ministers receive a living salary ? 

How many ministers are known to practice personal visitation, 
except in cases of sickness or death ? 

Do any of the churches confine their work to services once a 
week ? Is there an "open church" ? 

Is the minister overloaded with station work in neighboring 
towns ? 

Does the church give evidence of great power of leader- 
ship? 

Is there any proof that the church fosters personal character 
and neighborhood righteousness ? 

Is there any social activity in the churches other than short 
informal meetings after services, or suppers that are held for the 
purpose of raising funds ? 

What evidence is there of a sense of social responsibility for the 
entire community ? 

Is there a parish house in the town ? If so, does it emanate in- 
fluences that go to build up the moral and spiritual tones of the 
whole community ? 

Has any effort been made to extend the work of the Y. M. C. A. 
or Y. W. C. A. into your community ? 
o 



194 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

What is being done for the religious education of the community 
by Sunday schools ? by lectures, assemblies, or "chautauquas " ? 

What part of the population is reached by these means ? 

Are the methods of religious education modern and worth while ? 

Do the religious institutions and leaders of the community 
really have any vital effect upon the conduct of the people ? 

What is the religious attitude in your community toward play, 
amusements, social gatherings, and the like ? Has the church any 
conscience on the questions of graft, unfair business practices, 
political corruption, vicious governmental policies, or any of the 
modern forms of sin ? Which is the more important in the com- 
munity, money or human welfare ? 

What incentives has the minister to continue in his field ? 

What are the attitudes of various types of people in the com- 
munity toward the church and its work ? 

Does the religious teaching of your community connect itself 
in any vital way with the common life of the people ? Does it 
mean anything worth while in the present for the common man ? 

What social activities (hygienic campaigns, industrial move- 
ments, educational programs, or plans for deepening social under- 
standing) have arisen in the churches of your community, or been 
assisted by the religious forces ? Cannot the religious institutions, 
leaders, and people be helped to see the relationship of their work 
to the present social problem as a whole ? 

Is there not some social problem to be solved, or some social 
activity to be carried through which can enlist the services of 
every individual in the community, in a religious spirit ? 

Has your community any sort of a religious program looking 
ahead for ten years or more, forecasting the developments and 
preparing for them, and outlining a community work for all the 
people ? 

Is there any reason why you should not have such a program ? 

Is there any cooperation between the churches and the public 
schools ? 



THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 195 

What part do the churches have in the education of the children 
of the community? Are the public schools doing anything that 
could better be done by the churches ? Is there any division of 
labor between the schools and the churches ? Do the schools rec- 
ognize, in any way, the work of the churches, the place of religion 
in the life of the children and in the community ? 

Is the work of the public schools a pagan work, in the sense of 
being wholly intellectual and bookish ? Or is it fundamentally 
religious in the sense of conserving the community and individual 
resources of a social and moral sort ? Are the schools educating 
away from the community and away from the church ? 

What is the church doing for the community as a whole ? Does 
the school recognize this and cooperate with it ? 

Do both school and church think of themselves as social in- 
stitutions ? 

BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR FURTHER STUDY 

Butterfield. Chapters in Rural Progress. 

Gladden. Parish Problems. 

Henderson. Social Duties from the Christian Point of View. 

Proceedings of the Conference on the Problems of the Rural 
Church in New England. Held in Boston, Jan. 18-19, 1909. 
New England Country Church Association. Boston, 1909. 
Contains a program of work, and digest of addresses. 

Report of Committee on Morals and Rural Conditions. Minutes 
of 1 06th Annual Meeting, General Association of Congrega- 
tional Churches of Massachusetts. 1908. 

The Social Work of the Church. Annals of the American Academy 
of Political and Social Science, Nov., 1907. 

Brown. The Social Message of the Modem Pulpit. 

Peabody. Jesus Christ and the Social Question. 

Rauschenbusch. Christianity and the Social Crisis. 

Gilbert. How One Man Saved a Town. Outlook, April 18, 1908. 



196 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

Hartt. The Regeneration of Rural New England. Outlook, 

March 3, 10, 17, 31, 1900. 
Kennedy. Religious Overlapping. Independent, April 9, May 7, 

1908. 
Nesmith. The Rural Church. American Journal of Sociology, 

May, 1903. 
Wells. Church Federation. In Vermont Missionary, March, 

1909. 
Wells. The Country Church and its Social Problem. Outlook, 

August 18, 1906. 
Weight. The Country Church. Bibliotheca Sacra, April, 1890. 
Messages of the Men and Religions Forward Movement. 7 Vols. 

Association Press, 124 East 28th St., New York. 
Attention is especially called to the following pamphlets, which 
will be found of unusual service : 
A Social Survey for Rural Communities, by George Frederick Wells, 

published by the author, 150 Fifth Avenue, New York. 
A Social Service Program for the Parish, published by the Joint 

Commission on Social Service of the Protestant Episcopal 

Church, 157 Montague Street, Brooklyn. 
Extended bibliographies on this general field may be found in : 
Writings on Practical Church Problems, by G. F. Wells, Homiletic 

Review, August, 1909. 
A Selected Bibliography on the Country Church Problem, by Henry 

K. Rowe, Newton Theological Institution, Newton Centre, 

Mass. (Sent on request.) 
The Country Church, by G. F. Wells, in the Cyclopedia of American 

Agriculture. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE OF THE COM- 
MUNITY 

Between the school and the whole intellectual life of 
the community there should be the closest kinship. 
Yet it frequently happens that this is not the case. One 
reason is that very few people ever learn to read. The pupil 
learns his letters, puts them together into words, puts 
words together into sentences that, after a time, convey 
sense to the mind, and then he reads selections from the 
readers, First to Sixth. He may learn to enunciate 
clearly — the words ; and to read according to rhetorical 
" laws." 

But the taste for reading, intellectual interests nur- 
tured by means of these tastes, and life purposes that 
have an intellectual value growing out of this nurture : 
these are things that the schools do not take account of, 
nor strive for. Are the teachers to blame ? Not wholly ! 
" They teach but as their fathers taught." They do the 
best they know. The result is that the schools are book- 
ish, after a textbook fashion, but they do not minister 
deeply to actual taste for the finer things in the intel- 
lectual life. And the intellectual life of the community 
suffers by coming to have a distrust of and a distaste for 

books. "Books get us nowhere," they say. 

197 



198 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

But the difficulty is that we do not know books, — 
the great books of the world. We do not know how 
to read — and therefore our intellectual life, such as 
it is, goes on, in ignorance of the great thought of the 
world. 

How can it be otherwise when even with all our efforts 
library facilities are still tragically inadequate every- 
where ? I heard, recently, in a town of over 5000 popu- 
lation, which has no free public library, of a girl in high 
school who came from a good family and who was a most 
excellent student, who yet asserted that she never in 
her life had read a single book outside of those in her 
school course. She had been getting lessons all those 
years, but had never learned to read. The teachers 
had been teaching school rather than teaching children. 

My plea is that every community center should have 
its collection of books, tax-supported, free to every man, 
woman, and child in that community. The free use of 
a public collection of books should be as much the birth- 
right of every child in the United States as free public 
schools. In the state of Ohio fourteen mills on the dollar 
of taxable property may be levied for educational pur- 
poses ; in other words : to teach the children. The law 
allows a one mill levy for the maintenance of public 
libraries. Is it right to create a demand for books and 
then not supply it ? Is it right to teach children to read 
and then not to see that books are provided for them to 
read ? It may be said that the home supplies this need. 
Does it? What is the library in the average home in 



THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 199 

the rural or any community? I need not outline the 
motley collection. Possibly an atlas and dictionary, 
a few sensational books, such as " The Johnstown 
Flood," " The Eruption of Pelee," " The San Francisco 
Earthquake," " The Lives of the James Brothers," 
bought from subscription agents, usually for the sake 
of charity or philanthropy ; a few old histories, especially 
on the Civil War ; some lives of war generals and of our 
martyred presidents ; and perhaps a book or two con- 
taining a hodge-podge of everything from legal and 
social forms to conundrums and fortune telling. Enough 
money may have been spent on such a collection, for 
subscription books always come high, to have provided 
wholesome reading for the developing years of childhood. 
Some parents consider such provision for their children 
as an extravagance ; while others are willing to spend 
their money but they do not know what to buy. 

Newspaper and magazine selections are as poorly made, 
offering very little worth while to the child. Perhaps a 
county newspaper, a church paper, and farmer's maga- 
zine are taken. The rural free delivery is now adding 
a daily paper and in some cases the better magazines. 
Enough money is being spent by some of our farmers 
to supply their families with good periodical literature, 
if the expenditure could be rightly directed. There 
should be frequent and general exhibits of books and 
periodicals suitable for the farmer, his wife, and chil- 
dren. Such exhibits might well be made at county and 
state fairs, grange meetings, and farmers' institutes, 



200 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

in district schools and country churches. It would 
make a fine subject for the county teachers' institute and 
the distributions of such exhibits could be made through 
no better agency. Books and magazines have been con- 
sidered as more than luxuries in the country. Money 
comes in in small quantities and is carefully spent for 
necessities or for the gratification of vanity. 

The cream of the city comes from the country. Emer- 
son says : " City was country the day before yester- 
day." What does he mean ? The city dweller's ances- 
tors all came from the country. Why does the third 
generation born in the city feel that it must get back 
to the soil? Is it not to renew exhausted strength? 
If, then, the strength of the city depends on the stream 
coming in from the country, is it not essential that that 
stream be as intelligent as possible? And how can this 
intelligence be given if not at least in part through books 
and reading? 

If lack of time be any excuse there is time for reading 
in the country. When the country boy or girl, man or 
woman, is through with the necessary work the ques- 
tion is not so much " Where shall I go? " as " What 
shall I do? " Does this not account for much of the 
old-time patchwork, samplers, and knitting? What 
stories these things could tell of keeping the mind 
balanced ! What do the statistics of our insane asylums 
show in regard to country life? Enough has not been 
done to relieve its monotony. Is there any one thing 
beneath the dome of heaven that will relieve the tedium 



THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 201 

of existence anywhere so much as the distribution of 
sufficient literature ? 

The need of a general elevation of the standards of 
intelligence in the community is rather strikingly set 
forth by Professor Carver of Harvard. He says, in sub- 
stance, in an address delivered before the New England 
Country Church Association : " It may be accepted 
as a general law that the land of the country will pass 
more and more into the hands of those who can use it to 
the best advantage, — that is, into the hands of the best 
farmers. . . . No miracle is going to happen to prevent 
this result, or to interfere with the working of this eco- 
nomic law. . . . 

" There was a time when the finance ministers of 
European governments were hard pressed to provide a 
revenue for the governments. They eventually found 
that the best way to get adequate support for the govern- 
ment was to increase the prosperity of the country. 
When they began studying how to make the country 
prosperous, the science of national economy or political 
economy was born. When they who are charged with 
the task of community leadership awaken to the fact 
that the best way to secure adequate support is to make 
the country more prosperous, they will be on the right 
road. When they begin studying how to make the 
country more prosperous, the science of country economy 
will be born. This will be, for our rural regions, as for- 
tunate an event as the birth of political economy was for 
modern governments. 



202 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

" Of course there should be continued emphasis, in 
all our teachings, upon the plain economic virtues of 
industry, sobriety, thrift, practical, scientific knowledge, 
and mutual helpfulness ; but much more emphasis than 
hitherto should be placed on the last two. Practical 
scientific knowledge of agriculture, and mutual helpful- 
ness in the promotion of the welfare of the rural regions 
are absolutely essential. . . . 

" Organized efforts for the study of rural economy, 
for gaining more and more scientific knowledge of agri- 
culture, for the practical kind of brotherhood which shows 
itself in the form of mutual helpfulness and coopera- 
tion, in the form of decreasing jealousy and suspicion, 
in the form of greater public spirit, greater alertness for 
opportunities for promoting the public good and building 
up the community, in helping young men and young 
women to get started in productive work and in home 
building, in helping the children to get the kind of train- 
ing which will enable them to make a better living in 
the community fife for the whole community." . . . 

The knowledge which any community may develop 
in reference to its own resources and problems is incom- 
plete without that larger knowledge which comes from 
relating these community interests to the wider interests 
of the world both historically and geographically. Ac- 
cordingly, extended book and periodical lists have been 
added to each chapter of this book in order that the local 
interests aroused might find outlet in extended reading 
reaching out into the larger world. It is to be hoped that 



THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 203 

these book lists will prove helpful and suggestive, that 
the community will not be satisfied until in large meas- 
ure these materials and many others are provided for 
the general community use in a permanent community 
library. 

In most states some provision is being made for supply- 
ing smaller communities with traveling libraries from 
the central State library. " Towns having under 500 
population usually cannot support their own public 
library. The best thing these smaller towns can do is 
to organize a Library Association, apply to the proper 
state authorities for a traveling library, and work to 
build up a school library, which should be made accessible 
to all and during vacations also." 

The first step in organizing a local community library 
must be to arouse public sentiment in its favor. 

" A few earnest people realizing the need of a library, 
must determine that the people of their community shall 
have the benefit of free books, and must plan and work 
and agitate until every one is aroused to the fact that this 
opportunity is for them and for their children, if they 
will but take it. 

" Any person who is really interested in establishing 
a permanent library will first secure full information upon 
the subject. This means thorough understanding of 
the State law under which libraries, Associational or 
Municipal, may be established ; knowledge of what has 
been done in other communities in the State ; full com- 
prehension of local conditions and of the sentiment of the 



204 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

people upon educational matters. Promoters of the 
library movement should talk, or correspond with library 
leaders from other places, and should get the opinions 
of the sanest and most progressive leaders of their locality. 

"It is usually possible to enlist the support of some 
woman's club, or other organization, which will pledge 
its services to the library cause. It will be wise to secure 
the interest of some such organization already in exist- 
ence, to give it the privilege of calling the first public 
meeting to consider the library question, and of inviting 
the cooperation of other associations. 

" It is a mistake to keep the library movement in the 
hands of one club, as it must rely upon the support of all 
the people, some of whom are usually suspicious of the 
motives of any limited association. The honor and 
privilege of starting a library should belong to the person 
or association willing to forego the praise which such 
effort deserves, and to work enthusiastically and tirelessly 
with all who will join efforts for the common good." 

" It is usually best to organize an association to raise 
money for books, interest the community in the project, 
and bring the matter before the proper authorities. This 
organization should consist of men and women. From 
the beginning it should be understood that interest in the 
library movement is not limited to women. Business 
men and taxpayers are needed in any public work which 
must depend on tax support. This association should 
later give place to the library board appointed under the 
law. It may, however, continue its activities in raising 



THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 205 

money for new books, and should be a force behind the 
library so long as it is needed. 

" The governing body of the community may appro- 
priate money from the general fund for the first year, 
but should thereafter levy a library tax for any regular 
appropriation. Usually the members of such bodies 
are very willing to follow public sentiment in founding 
public enterprises, but, like all other human beings, they 
are governed somewhat by their prejudices, and should 
be approached by people whom they respect, who have 
tact and good judgment. An enthusiastic but tactless 
hobby rider may undo months of careful work. In most 
places where libraries have been started the citizens have 
raised a fund or bought a collection of books and offered 
them to the public if the council would agree to found a 
permanent library. This is ordinarily the easiest way 
to secure one. 

" If the country is thickly settled, talk to the farmers 
about the library and get them to join with the towns- 
people in securing a library for town and country alike, 
free to all who can come to it. When the library is per- 
manently established, arrangements should be made 
whereby all may do their share in its support. . . . 

" The publicity and cooperation committee should 
supply brief articles for the local papers, and arrange 
for a ' Library Sunday,' upon which all ministers would 
agree to urge the importance of a public supply of good 
books to the moral welfare of the community, and of the 
use of good books in the home. This committee should 



206 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

see that the results of the meeting are made public, and 
that all agencies unite in supporting the library move- 
ment. It should investigate existing collections of books 
and what remains of any old libraries to see if they may 
be merged into the public library. 

" The committee on ways and means will make in- 
vestigations in regard to rooms or buildings available ; 
cost of rent; shelving and furniture; cost of running 
the library ; probability of tax ; condition of town finances ; 
attitude of officials, prominent people; and, possibly, 
plan for meetings and entertainments for the benefit 
of the library. 

" The committee on books and administration should 
investigate in regard to selection and purchase of books, 
and library service and management. 

" In general, it should be remembered that it takes 
time to create public sentiment of any lasting worth ; 
that hasty action of ill-formed enthusiasts will probably 
not result in the establishment of a permanent, valuable, 
educational institution ; that it is unwise to force any- 
thing upon an unwilling community ; and that it may re- 
quire a long campaign, patiently and tactfully conducted, 
to bring the people to cordial support of a library project. 

" It is not worth while to waste time arguing with the 
cranks who always oppose public improvement; to 
listen to the chronic objector to taxes ; or to give much 
attention to those who know from sad experience with 
old association or subscription libraries that the library 
will fail. The ghost of an old library, organized before 



THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 207 

the State Library Law was passed, will rise to trouble 
organizers of the new enterprise. A modern free public 
library differs from the old association library just as 
the modern free public school differs from the old 
' select ' academy. 

" Reasonable objections should be courteously met and 
answered. The most earnest supporters of the library 
movement will be among the broad-minded men of self- 
education who realize the difficulties in this method and 
want to make the process less difficult ; and among the 
parents of large families who can do little more individu- 
ally than to meet the everyday material needs of their 
children, and welcome a cooperative movement which 
will make the necessary books possible. 

" It may as well be understood from the beginning 
that it will cost something to have a good library. It 
pays to start right, with the best books, and modern 
methods. The association should raise the initial book 
fund, but ordinarily the subscription method of support 
should cease with that. People tire of an institution 
supported by begging. 

" If the library project is to command respect, it should 
be on a business basis from the start, and should not be 
undertaken until the community can afford it. On the 
other hand, the library should not be regarded as a luxury, 
and its establishment postponed from year to year. . . . 
The time will never come when a live community ceases 
to make improvements; and a library movement in a 
dead community has no competitors for public support. 



208 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

" It must be understood that the library is to be a 
permanent and growing institution and must have 
proper support, if it is to be successful. The library 
should have an assured income. It should have reg- 
ular service and should be open at least three afternoons 
and evenings each week. 

" The initial expenses for shelving, tables, chairs, 
fixtures, and supplies should be considered separately. 
The exact cost of running a library will depend upon 
local conditions, which will determine the cost of rent, 
heat, light, care of building and rooms, and possibly 
of service. The other regular expenses will be for serv- 
ices, books, binding, periodicals, stationery, printing, 
supplies, postage, freight and express, and for inci- 
dentals, including insurance and repairs. 

" Any public-spirited man ought to be willing to help 
to maintain a public supply of good books at the rate 
of ten cents for every $300 of his actual wealth. One 
third of a mill on a dollar would be one cent on $30, ten 
cents on $300, one dollar on $3000. Ordinarily prop- 
erty is assessed at from 50 to 90 per cent of its real 
value. Assume that the valuation is 75 per cent. A 
$3000 house would be assessed for $2250 and the annual 
tax at one third of a mill would be 75 cents, and for this 
the taxpayer and the members of his family would get 
all the books they could read in twelve months, and the 
children would have the benefit of the references in 
their studies. For the owner of a modest $1500 home 
the one third of a mill would be 38 cents, and he would 



THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 200. 

get in return the use of hundreds of the very best books 
and magazines for himself and his family. Surely this 
is no burden. A community which had $350 a year for 
the library loaned its thousand volumes 8000 times in 
one year. Figure the cost of each book to each reader 
and see what other cooperative plan yields better re- 
turns on the investment." 1 M. E. D. 

SURVEY OF THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE 

Are there women's clubs in the community ? If so, what is the 
character of the programs, miscellaneous, or one or two subjects 
studied in the year ? Are the women interested in civic affairs ? 
Are they real students of any of these subjects ? Are they or- 
ganized in civic or other associations for the betterment of con- 
ditions locally, for the state, and nation ? Do they try to in- 
fluence legislation, either state or national ? 

How does the level of intelligence of the women of the community 
compare with that of the men ? Do the men respect women as 
comrades or do they try to limit them to a certain "sphere"? 
What is the attitude of the community toward children ? 

Is as much or more attention given to their upbringing as is 
shown in the breeding and raising of fine stock ? Do parents want 
their children to have better advantages than they themselves 
had or is "what was good enough for me good enough for my 
children"? Is the desire for better advantages really helpful 
to the children ? 

Are the people appealed to through emotions or intellect in the 
church services ? Are there any lectures or lecture courses deal- 
ing with serious concerns and subjects ? 

Is there a college or any institution of higher learning in the 

1 The above suggestions on building a community library are adapted, 
by permission, from the publications of the Oregon Library Commission, 
p 



2IO EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

community ? If so, what is its effect on the intellectual life in 
general? Has there at some previous time been a college or 
academy in the community ? If so what impress did it leave on 
the community? 

What effect do the recreations and sports have on the intel- 
lectual ideals of the community ? 

What has been the effect of the telephone, interurban railway, 
and rural free delivery on the intellectual development of the 
community ? 

Is there centralization of public schools ? If so, what is the effect 
on the community as a whole? Are there tendencies toward 
centralization in other things; e.g., libraries, churches, household 
economics, farm industries ? 

Is there a free public library supported by tax in the community ? 
If not has there been any agitation or interest toward starting 
one ? Are the people familiar with the library laws of their state 
and of the help given by the state in establishing libraries ? Does 
the Board of Education furnish supplementary reading for the 
schools ? Are state traveling libraries used in the community ? 

What are the usual subjects of conversation in the community ? 
Is it confined to household affairs, the crops and neighborhood 
gossip, or does it broaden to show a wide field of intelligence ? 

What is the general attitude toward money? Do people care 
for it only for the sense of possession, or do they intelligently ap- 
preciate what it obtains? What effect does the wealth of the 
community have on its general intelligence ? Are people so ab- 
sorbed in money getting that they have no time for the things 
that make for culture and refinement ? 

What books are mostly read in the community? What types 
of books are found in the homes ? What periodicals are read by 
the people, at home, or in public places, of any sort ? Is the general 
level of intelligence rising or falling ? Why ? 

Is anything being done to interest boys and girls in the problems 
of the community? Do the people say of their community, 



THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY 211 

"There is nothing here for the ambitious boy " ? Is this true? 
Does the community feel any of the currents of thought from the 
larger life of the state and nation ? 

Are there any of the old-time "literary societies or Lyceum^" 
in the community ? What are the actual sources of the intel- 
lectual life of the community ? Are the schools real intellectual 
forces in the community life ? Are the teachers looked upon as 
intellectual leaders ? If not, who are the real intellectual leaders 
of the community ? Is their leadership socially desirable ? 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

American Academy of Political Science. Annals, Vol. 40. March, 

1912. 
Anderson, W. L. The Country Town. A study in rural evolution. 
Bailey, L. H. The Country Life Movement in the United States. 
Bailey, L. H. The State and the Farmer. 
Bailey, L. H. The Training of Farmers. 
Beard, A. P. The Story of John Frederick Oberlin. 
Butterfield, K. L. Chapters in Rural Progress. 
Canfield, J. H. Opportunities of Rural Population for Higher 

Education. 
Carver, T. N. Principles of Rural Economics. 
Clark, J. B. The Distribution of Wealth. 

Cornell, W. S. Health and Medical I nspection of Schoolchildren. 
Coulter, J. L. Cooperation among Farmers, the Keystone of Rural 

Prosperity. 
Cubberley, E. P. The Improvement of Rural Schools. 
Curtis, H. S. The Reorganized School Playground. U. S. Bureau 

of Education, 191 2, Bulletin 16. 
Dinsmore. Teaching a Country School. 
Escott, T. H. S. Society in the Country House. 
Giddings, F. H. Descriptive and Historical Sociology. 
Green, J. B. Law for the American Farmer. 



212 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

Hall, G. S. Youth. 

Hapgard, H. R. Rural Denmark and its Lessons. 

Harris, H. F. Health on the Farm. 

Kern, 0. J. Among Country Schools. 

McKeever, W. A. Farm Boys and Girls. 

Plunkett, Sir H. C. Ireland in the New Century. 

Plunkett, Sir H. C. The Rural Life Problem in the United 

States. 
Powell, E. P. How to live in the Country. 
Raymond, W. English Country Life. 
Roads, C. Rural Christendom. 

Robertson, J. W. Conservation of Life in Rural Districts. 
Robertson, J. W. Satisfactions of Country Life. 
U. S. Experiment Station. Country Life Education. U. S. Bureau 

of Agriculture. 
Van Hise, C. R. The Conservation of Natural Resources in the 

United States. 
Wilson, W. H. The Church of the Open Country. 
Wilson, W. H. The Evolution of the Country Community. A 

study in religious sociology. 
Wilson, W. H. Quaker Hill, a Sociological Study. Privately 

printed. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE COMMUNITY LIFE; CURRICULUM OF 
THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL 

Education a Fundamental Agency in Rural Life. — 

It is quite evident that while several agencies enter into 
the movement to make American rural life more whole- 
some and more humanly satisfying than it now is, we 
ought to be able to point to some one agency as abso- 
lutely fundamental to the solution. Rural life students 
agree that the comparative isolation and barrenness of 
rural life must be overcome ; that those who live in 
rural communities must become better organized than 
they are ; and that a new emphasis must be placed 
on ethical and aesthetic idealism in rural districts. 

But how shall this be brought to pass ? The initiative 
must come from the open country itself. This calls for 
a leadership such as is now seldom found in rural com- 
munities. The demand is for men and women with a 
vision — men and women imbued with the spirit of 
masterful action, and thoroughly prepared to cope with 
the difficulties of a rural life which — like ours — is 
passing from a period of exploitation to true husbandry 
farming. Properly directed education alone can furnish 
this leadership. It, then, is the fundamental agency 

necessary to the success of the rural life movement. 

213 



214 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

If we have the educated men and women, the other great 
problems cannot resist solution. The farmers will then 
become organized and so enabled to hold their own 
against the centralized interests of city life ; to-day 
what they need is direction. In fact, every phase of 
social, economic, and spiritual retardation in agricultural 
districts may be expected to yield to the new educated 
leadership. 

Agriculture our Dominant Interest. — There is nothing 
more fundamental in our country than the soil and what 
it produces, what lives under it, and the humanity which 
in last analysis draws its sustenance from the soil. 
Those who labor close to the soil are the chief wealth 
makers of the nation. The destiny of our people will 
rest largely with the men and women of the farm. We 
have no greater or more dominant interest than agri- 
culture. 

Any form of education, to be effective, must reflect 
the daily life and interests of the community where 
employed. Since agriculture is our chief primary in- 
dustry, the redirected education for the open country 
must be agricultural in its nature. By this is meant 
vastly more than the study of agriculture as a school 
subject. The new education must give expression to at 
least two things : (i) good scientific farming, rendering 
ample returns for the labor expended ; and (2) a rural 
social life satisfactory to those living it. 

Farming as an occupation has not been very remuner- 
ative. This statement leaves out of consideration the 



THE CURRICULUM OF THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL 215 

unearned increment in land values. Science in educa- 
tion must make it at least as profitable as an equal in- 
vestment would be in the city. Otherwise people will 
leave the farm. But even if agriculture be made more 
profitable than at the present time, this alone will not be 
sufficient inducement to keep a large productive popu- 
lation on our farms. Daily life there must first be made 
more humanly interesting, more desirable. The pros- 
pector for precious metals will remain in his " diggin's " 
no longer than is absolutely necessary to gather his hoard ; 
he will then hasten away to meet social beings of his 
own kind. So with the country folk. If country life 
cannot offer the simplest social satisfactions, people will 
go where they can get them. The redirected education 
with which we are concerned in these pages must aim 
to make better farmers and better helpmeets for these 
farmers, must make the occupation more remunerative, 
and the whole life more satisfactory and free from city 
domination. 

The Rural School Arraigned. — There was a time when 
all our schools, town and country alike, had many more 
things in common than now. This was before steam 
and electric power gave us the great machine age with 
its greatly specialized city life. The first rural teacher 
was city bred and city trained, had city ways and 
sympathies, and brought with him to the country a city 
course of study. But in the early days this was of 
little consequence ; for then even city life, so-called, 
was provincial in nature, in many ways scarcely more 



2l6 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

than an overgrown rural life. But times have changed. 
Our towns have become mighty centers of commerce 
and manufacture. The needs of city life have found 
expression in a course of study preparing children for 
the varied activities there, and all has gone well with 
the city. But what about the country schools? They 
have gone right on, down to the opening of the present 
century, using a course of study formulated for children 
with city motives, with the natural result that vast 
numbers of farm boys and farm girls have been trained 
away from the country instead of for it. 

The specific charge against the rural school is this : 
(i) it has drawn too much of its substance from sources 
foreign to rural needs; and (2) it has failed, moreover, 
to keep pace with the needs of our rapidly developing 
agricultural life. The school has had its face towards 
the city. Worse still, it has been almost at a standstill. 
Says Mr. Roosevelt's Commission on Country Life : 
" The schools are held largely responsible for ineffective 
farming, lack of ideals, and the drift to town. This 
is not because the rural schools, as a whole, are declining, 
but because they are in a state of arrested development 
and have not yet put themselves in consonance with 
all the recently changed conditions of life." The great 
task of the new rural teacher is to put the school in 
harmony with the needs and time and place of present- 
day life. 

A Redirected Curriculum for the Rural School. — 
Fundamentally the boys and girls of rural communities 



THE CURRICULUM OF THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL 217 

have the same instincts and capabilities as boys and 
girls who live in the cities ; and of course all school 
education, whether given in the country or in the city, 
should seek to bring out all that is deepest and best in 
life as a whole ; but in view of physical conditions the 
interests of city children and country children are greatly 
divergent. City children learn to exhaust their energies 
and have their pleasures among the varying and dis- 
tracting scenes and conventionalities of the city; while 
the country children under proper direction find their 
consuming interests in nature, in field and meadow, in 
orchard and garden — on the farm ; and if led by teachers 
who have been efficiently prepared in rural education, 
it is quite certain that the farm children will grow up 
in love with nature for its own sake, and also in love with 
the farm and the farm place, where in time they may 
find the greatest opportunities for free and independent 
and wholesome living. 

This is interpreted to mean that some subjects which 
have long held place in the traditional curriculum are 
yielding this place ; or, at least, these subjects are begin- 
ning to receive an altered emphasis. New subjects 
which are essential to agricultural progress are finding 
important places in the new curriculum. Thus, nature 
study, elementary agriculture, several forms of hand- 
craft, farm accounts, and physical education are begin- 
ning to receive consideration in progressive schools. 

Second in importance only to the subjects taught is 
the new emphasis to be laid on some of the old essentials. 



2l8 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

This must be in part a spiritualizing emphasis, in part 
industrializing. Lessons in literature and composition 
may very properly emphasize the beauties of nature 
in the farm environment, thus awakening a love for 
life in the country. Geography and arithmetic may be 
made to deal with much that is near at hand and used 
in everyday life. It is more to the point, in these schools, 
to make a liberal use of a Babcock milk tester than to 
spend much time with an astronomical, or other, chart 
dealing with phenomena taken from the heavenly blue. 
The rural schools will soon be teaching less of stocks and 
bonds, cube root, and Troy weight ; and more of dairy 
problems and rotation of farm crops, spraying mixtures, 
and handy farm measures. When the average rural 
school shall get the great vision and redirect its work 
into these new channels, the new educated leadership, 
spoken of above, will soon be forthcoming. 

Denmark an Illustration to the Point. — The writer 
had the privilege, a few years ago, to spend some time 
in a model Danish rural community. On the one side 
of an ample highway lay the schoolmaster's home : a 
rambling, airy house, spick and span without and within. 
Flower beds, graveled walks, and rustic seats filled the 
front yard. To the rear lay the vegetable garden and 
experimental plot, in which the teacher and children 
worked together while the earth preached her sermons 
in their ears and made them strong in their love to dwell 
close to nature's heart. 

Just beyond the master's home lay the schoolhouse 



THE CURRICULUM OF THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL 210. 

in ample grounds. The love of nature was apparent 
everywhere, both in planting and in care of planted 
things. On the playgrounds were erected simple gymnas- 
tic apparatus for both boys and girls. The Dane believes 
with all his heart in the function of play, and he realizes 
that the physical development of country children does 
not come one whit nearer perfection than in the cities. 
The schoolroom was well ventilated and had an abun- 
dance of light. But of chief interest was the subject 
matter offered in this school. While the so-called es- 
sentials were taught in a most thorough manner, the 
farm subjects, after all, formed the core of the curricu- 
lum. Nature study in its truest and broadest form was 
here, elementary agriculture, farm accounting, and first 
steps in all those things which make the Danes the most 
scientific agriculturalists in the world. The Danes 
have learned to love nature for its own sake, rather than 
for the money to be got out of it. The farm is home. 
They have been taught to prefer it to the city. In 
Denmark there is no danger of a cityward exodus. The 
Danish farmers have solved the problems we are now 
facing. Their agriculture is scientific ; their social and 
economic organizations of a cooperative nature are 
unexcelled. Denmark has an educated rural leadership ; 
and what is of greatest interest to us, the redirected 
country schools have furnished this leadership. 

Now, while it is neither desirable nor wise to transplant 
to our shores school systems taken from European 
countries, yet such countries can teach us lessons of 



220 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

greatest value. Denmark was forced to do its best 
industrially and economically on account of disastrous 
war and cruel tariff discrimination. We have had no 
such disaster. But at this time, with the shifting in our 
population, and rural instability, we can well profit 
by what others have done and substitute a virile telic 
policy for the headless genetic system under which we 
have long been living. 

Nature Environment the Background of the Re- 
directed Course of Study. — By this time it will appear 
clear that the nature environment must play a leading 
role in the work of the rural school. Certainly it is true 
that there can be no really successful living in the country 
if the individual happens to be out of harmony with 
the wonderful phenomena of nature round about him. 
Those who get the most out of country life live close to 
nature. They know and love the created things — 
know field and stream, weather and soil, fish and birds 
and insects. The really good farmers are great natural- 
ists. 

With us, rural children have lived largely in the very 
heart of nature and yet remained strangers there. 
The Danish children study blade and leaf and flower 
from earliest infancy. This is the work of the school 
and is begun while the child mind is plastic, and sym- 
pathetic and loving. Such children are never in danger 
of being turned out by the school, shrewd, calculating 
men who own the soil chiefly for the money they 
can wring out of it. In our country we are unfortunately 



THE CURRICULUM OF THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL 2 21 

prone to judge things by the commercial standard. The 
so-called " practical " traits are inherent in us. Here 
begins the work of the new teacher. 1 He must be able 
to take the rural child in its own little world and lead 
it along the pathway of life, directing its native 
adaptabilities, sentiments, and powers, and there develop 
in the child breast a sympathy with its environment, 
and in the child mind an understanding of nature's 
ways — then, once awakened to the surpassing beauties 
of rural environments, the American boy and girl will 
no longer be in danger of deserting the farm for the 
man-made glitter of the city. 

The Rural School and Nature Study. — Nature study 
should form the background for the greater part of the 
rural school curriculum. This may be made clear by 
outlining briefly the specific values of the subject, 
viz. economic, aesthetic, social-ethical, religious, and 
educational. 2 

Economic. — By the time they are ready for concrete 
agriculture the children will be familiar with the common 
goods in nature and with its evil things. They should 
by that time know the value of pure air and pure water, 
the influence of sheltering forests and shade trees, the 
importance to life on the farm of beneficent birds, insects, 
and batrachians. They should, on the other hand, be 
familiar with the pests constantly menacing farm life, 
such as destructive insects, birds, noxious weeds, and 

1 See " The American Rural School," pp. 14-15. 

2 " The American Rural School," pp. 156-161. 



222 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

dangerous vegetable diseases. This phase of nature 
study appeals strongly to farm interests, and the effect 
is to draw ever closer the ties which bind the school and 
home through kindred interests. This will give us 
naturalist farmers. 

Esthetic. — The teacher must bring the children 
under the spell of the sublime in nature. The small, 
still voice of nature should be permitted to commune 
with teacher and children through beautiful flowers and 
waving grasses, sheltering shrubs and spreading trees. 
This can be realized only through the teacher's digging 
and planting side by side with the children. Here, 
amidst the earth smells and the calling of nature, they 
will become strong in their love to live close to nature's 
heart. This will give us permanent country dwellers. 

Social and Ethical. — A deep-seated respect for social 
and ethical law is needed in our country. The sooner 
children learn that they have social and moral obliga- 
tions which are bound to be respected, the better it is 
for them. Girls and boys have a certain amount of 
energy which is bound to get an outlet somehow; if 
early led to love nature, they will become its protectors. 
Such children will not vandalize nature ; when grown 
up they are sure to become good, law-abiding members of 
society. This makes for a morally sound citizenship. 

Religious. — To love nature is to love nature's God. 
The teacher's manifest opportunity is to take advantage 
of the still voice in nature to reach the inner recesses 
of the child soul, to instill there a love for well doing in 



THE CURRICULUM OF THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL 223 

looking after the happiness of God's created things, 
thereby attaining the child's happiness and for himself 
the crown of life. This makes for a religious country 
folk. 

Educational. — While the naturalistic tendencies in 
education have been the slow growth of ages, we have 
at last come to realize that scholarship for scholarship's 
sake alone is untenable. The arts and sciences that do 
not affect the minds and habits of children in a way to 
furnish them with an increased disposition for service 
can no longer be upheld. Nature study is doing more 
than any other subject to overcome this disproportion 
between the theoretical and practical in school life. 
This fits education to the needs of man, instead of man 
to the school. 

The discussion of values reveals the comprehensive- 
ness of nature study. The first five years in school 
should generally be devoted to the inspirational and 
general phases, leaving the more concrete work to the 
last three years of the course. This may find expres- 
sion in beautifying school grounds and home grounds, 
in making school and home gardens, and school experi- 
mental plots, and in practical agriculture. 

Nature-study Agriculture in the Schools. — Agri- 
culture as taught in many schools to-day gets too much 
emphasis on the so-called " practical " and " useful " 
phases of the subject, to the detriment of its all-important 
background — the nature environment. We can never 
lay too much stress upon this fact. There are those 



224 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

who have taken up agriculture as a concession to farm- 
ers and farming when, by very nature, it should always 
have been part of the school curriculum. Such teachers 
have hastened to make it a dollars-and-cents study; 
regardless whether or not the children had the prepara- 
tion, gleaned from contact with the great out-of-doors, 
to make their study from the point of view of little 
naturalists. Dr. L. H. Bailey, speaking on this subject, 
says : " I would not approach the subject primarily 
from the occupational point of view, but from the edu- 
cational and spiritual ; that is, the man should know his 
work and his environment. The mere giving of informa- 
tion about agricultural objects and practices can have 
very little good result with children. The spirit is 
worth more than the letter. Some of the hard and dry 
tracts on farming would only add one more task to the 
teacher and the pupil, if they were introduced to the 
school, making the new subject in time as distasteful 
as arithmetic and grammar often are." * 

It was suggested above that the general phases of 
nature study should occupy the pupil's attention for the 
first five years in school, to be followed in the last three 
years with agriculture, or more correctly speaking, 
nature-study agriculture. It would be unfortunate at 
any time to lose sight of the nature-study phases •> 
although, of course, the agricultural application must 
become more amd more apparent as the years advance. 
The entire eight years' course may be considered as a 
1 " The Nature-Study Idea," p. 98. 



THE CURRICULUM OF THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL 225 

cumulative growth, unmarked by any break to show 
where nature study ends and agriculture begins. 

The teaching cannot be limited to a textbook or 
manual, although these are essential enough as leading 
threads for the last year or so. Agriculture must be 
taught in the great laboratory of nature. The school 
ground, including experimental plot and garden, must 
come first. Then there are orchards and cornfields 
and meadows which can be used ; and corn and cereals, 
barnyard fowls and other animals to be brought to school 
and studied. Some one-teacher schools, to the writer's 
knowledge, find time to make their grounds beautiful, 
test all seed corn for the district, bud all the peach trees 
required to plant the orchards of the whole countryside, 
grow corn and vegetables for the annual contest, and 
still have an abundance of time for the other school 
tasks. When such able teachers are found every- 
where home and school will speedily reach an under- 
standing. 

Gardens and Experimental Plots. — Every rural 
school should stand in its own laboratory. This means 
a large school ground, ample enough for play, with room 
for flower beds and trees, a common experimental plot 
and garden with individual plots for all the children. 
It is just as reasonable to expect good results in chemistry 
by merely reading the experiments from textbooks as 
to study agriculture from books without gardens and 
experimental plots. 

Unfortunately, lack of space forbids the going into 
Q 



226 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

details on the interesting subject of experimental plots 
and gardens. This much must suffice : every rural 
school should have some sort of an experimental plot, 
even if no more than a few feet square. Something can 
be done here in budding and grafting trees, layering 
shrubs, etc., and in the study of crop rotation, and the 
use and effect of fertilizers. If, for any reason, such as 
short school years and difficulty in caring for it during 
the summer vacation, a school garden should seem im- 
practicable, a home garden may be made to answer the 
purpose. This plot is cultivated under directions from 
the teacher, who cooperates with the pupils' parents, 
who in turn lend guidance and encouragement to the 
work. In the fall a reckoning is made of the summer's 
work, a competitive exhibit is held at the schoolhouse, 
and possibly the winning corn, potatoes, etc., are sent 
to the country fair. 

Boys' and Girls' Industrial Clubs. — No expedient 
made use of in recent years by educators, in their efforts 
to solve the farm problem, has met with such universal 
approval as has the industrial club. 1 It appeals to the 
average farmer's self-interest. He is quick to recognize 
its value by tangible results. Likely enough, he has 
experienced defeat in the corn contest at the hands of 
his own sons, whose corn commands $2 per bushel, while 
his own brings only the regular market price. Such 
farmers will become stanch supporters of the schools, 
and work for a better cooperation than heretofore. 

1 " The American Rural School," pp. 222-223. 



THE CURRICULUM OF THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL 227 

Every rural school should have a live industrial club. 
The influence of such an organization can scarcely be 
overestimated. The power of observation is developed 
through watching growing crops, or by studying the 
chemistry of cookery. It means a broadening of view, 
through contact with others in friendly rivalry at the 
contests or while upon excursions to other schools. 
The club, finally, gives a spirit of independence and 
mastery engendered in this conquest of real things. 

The activities of the " growing " clubs should be 
limited only by natural restrictions. The staple crops 
of the particular section of country concerned would 
naturally be emphasized. Thus corn, cotton, wheat, 
sugar beets, fruit, and potatoes may receive the attention 
of the growers, according to locality. But club work 
can be extended profitably to other activities as well. 
The teacher may organize clubs in cooking, fruit and 
vegetable preserving, floriculture, and other lines of 
domestic science and manual training. 

The Community's Share in Such Work. — Boys' and 
girls' clubs offer exceptional common ground on which 
home and school can meet. Work in cookery and sewing, 
or in corn growing and horticulture, naturally projects 
itself right into the home and farm place. Fathers and 
mothers are bound to become responsive to such a 
movement, as they cannot help seeing in it work of 
greatest mutual concern. Little by little, there grows 
up a community-wide interest in the work of the school. 
The teacher from this moment becomes a community 



228 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

leader. The whole is fraught with great possibilities : 
(i) a sentiment will develop, ending with the com- 
munity's getting the best possible school; (2) the dis- 
cussions and lectures given in connection with the club 
exhibits and contests will awaken a desire for more knowl- 
edge on the part of the patrons; and (3) the old way 
of living will become revolutionized through the intro- 
duction of extension courses, which may be expected 
to effect marked changes in home life as well as com- 
munity life. 

Manual Training and Domestic Science. — Many a 
young man or young woman who has left the farm has 
done so because life there seemed but one monotonous 
round of manual labor, devoid of every incentive to mental 
growth. Our country youth have not always been taught 
the difference between manual labor and manual train- 
ing. The boys learn early enough the correct use of 
hoe and spade, plow and harrow, but it is all work — 
hard, bone-splitting work. The girls wash and bake, 
milk and churn, becoming day-long drudges. Hard work, 
long days, aching backs, a monotonous round lasting 
from starshine to starshine, tell the story of some farm 
communities. 

The school has a great opportunity right here. The 
sordid and deadening in farm life is pretty sure to con- 
tinue until the school shall be able to supplant it with 
a larger outlook on life, brought about through the in- 
troduction of many home conveniences for the women, 
and modern labor-saving appliances for the men. The 



THE CURRICULUM OF THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL 229 

school will have to speak through the children, demon- 
strating that the farm community can have the use of 
almost every modern convenience now found in the city. 

But more than this, the work of the school is to in- 
fuse into the old tasks a new-born interest sprung from 
a union of head, heart, and hand. This contemplates 
manual training for boys and domestic science for girls. 
The purpose may be stated thus : (1) the adaptation of 
manual and muscular energy to the end that farm pur- 
suits may become more skilled and scientific ; and 
(2) the recognition of the beautiful as well as the practical 
in material creation, to the end that farm life may be- 
come more attractive and more beautiful, and better 
worth living. 1 Many schools are even now adding a new 
dignity to farm tasks, creating an eagerness and love 
for work which before seemed sordid and common- 
place ; and proving that what once was a life of drudgery 
can be made a beautiful, scientific occupation. 

Physical Education and Hygiene. — Possibly the 
greatest responsibility, as well as greatest opportunity, 
of the rural teacher is connected with the physical 
education of the children and the health and sanitation 
of the community. Because of the advantage of an 
abundance of pure air, large playgrounds, and long, 
healthful walks, it is generally supposed that the health 
of country children needs no looking after. Not only 
is this incorrect, for such children prove to be no more 
exempt from physical weakness and disease than city 

1 "The American Rural School," p. 241. 



230 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

children, but country people as a whole are surprisingly 
ignorant on the subject of personal hygiene and home 
sanitation. Such startling disclosures of unsanitary 
conditions were made to his Commission on Country 
Life that President Roosevelt felt constrained to em- 
phasize this in a special message to Congress in 1909. 
After speaking of other country needs he continues : 
" To these may well be added better sanitation ; for 
easily preventable diseases hold several million country 
people in the slavery of continuous bad health." * 

The teacher has a double task to perform : (1) he 
must look after the physical development and health 
of the individual child in school ; and (2) he must spread 
the gospel of good health and sanitation to the whole 
community. Such is the work of the new school. 

Of first importance to the teacher is a clear under- 
standing of the relation of the child's physical condition 
to school efficiency. It is now clearly demonstrated 
that failure in studies, general apathy and dullness, ex- 
treme nervousness, and even viciousness on the part of 
many children are traceable to the existence of chronic 
ailments or to minor defects of a remediable nature. 
Every rural teacher should be on the alert to discover 
defects in hearing and eyesight, and read the many signs 
of adenoidal conditions, nervous irritability, etc., so 
common in school children. Having found the cause 
of trouble he must have the courage to insist upon cor- 
rection. Every rural teacher must be his own physical 

1 " Report of the Commission on Country Life," pp. 100-103. 



THE CURRICULUM OF THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL 23 1 

inspector, which means that he must be able to recognize 
the symptoms of disease common to children, such as 
diphtheria, scarlet fever, measles, whooping cough, and 
mumps, and then take immediate action upon discovery. 
He must have some knowledge of diseases known to be 
caused by germs and should take every precaution pos- 
sible to minimize the danger of attack by keeping the 
schoolroom well ventilated and scrupulously clean, 
disinfecting floors, desks, and books frequently. This 
knowledge should be given the children through daily 
lessons, and so emphatically that it will reach the home 
and do good there. 

The teacher must spread the gospel of good health 
and sanitation to the whole community. In the country, 
typhoid fever, malaria, ague, and pneumonia crave many 
victims annually. Improper drainage, impure water, 
and poor ventilation are some of the causes conspiring 
to heap these afflictions on our farm population. The 
teacher who looks after the children's health in school 
and trains them in more sanitary habits, will be able — 
if tactful — to consult with and advise the parents, to 
the end of securing better conditions. 

Supervised Play and School Morals. — Physical edu- 
cation has a legitimate place in every rural school. 
This manifests itself through the agencies of manual 
training, play, gymnastics, and athletics. Of these 
manual training has been sufficiently emphasized else- 
where. Gymnastics and athletics may also be dis- 
missed with a word, as they have been discussed fully 



232 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

in another chapter of the book. Country children are 
inclined to be ungainly and awkward, very often un- 
shapely, bespeaking strength without the essential req- 
uisites of harmony and beauty. Their shuffling foot- 
steps and ungainly bearing is proof of disproportionate 
physical development. A few simple gymnastic ex- 
ercises, informally given, will do much toward straight- 
ening crooked knees and flat shoulders. Some inex- 
pensive gymnastic apparatus should have place on every 
school ground in the country. Athletics may be em- 
ployed in rural districts chiefly as incidental to de- 
veloping a more interesting and attractive community 
life. 

Supervised play in the school is now really a part of 
the curriculum. Not alone is play a natural relief from 
the enslavement of labor, but it is a sort of preparation 
for the activities to be entered upon later in life. The 
wise teacher will encourage wholesome outdoor games, 
going so far as to teach new games and in other ways 
supervise the playground activities. School children 
who are left to their own devices often yield to immoral 
suggestion and learn vicious habits. Nothing is so effec- 
tive in keeping mind and body pure as interesting games 
and plenty of wholesome physical exercise. 

New Leaven in the Old Subjects. — In the foregoing 
paragraphs nature study has been pointed to as the sub- 
stantial background of the rural school curriculum. 
From it agriculture should develop as a concrete expres- 
sion of the practical. Manual training and domestic 



THE CURRICULUM OF THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL 233 

science are intended to add dignity to household tasks, 
making these less arduous and giving a new and broader 
outlook on life. These subjects are in a sense recent 
additions to the curriculum, although nature study in 
some form has long had place in many of the better 
schools. Now, to turn to the other subjects taught in 
the average school, it is good doctrine to state that so 
far as these express the activities and needs of the com- 
munity they answer an educative purpose ; but so far 
as they deal with things foreign in time and place to 
the rural community, they fail of such a purpose. 

We reemphasize here that the general interests of 
children are the same wherever they may live; hence, 
the fundamental elements are the same in the education 
of both country and city children. In local application 
only do they differ. For example, the same general 
teachings and principles of geography and arithmetic 
hold good for both; the local application only should 
vary with community needs. To further make this point 
clear : agriculture concerns itself not only with the 
production of raw materials, but with placing these in 
the hands of the manufacturer or consumer. Here 
agriculture overlaps with geography. Thus the geog- 
raphy taught in rural schools should lay particular stress 
on the agricultural phases. These, among other things, 
include a study of land and water forms of the home 
place ; composition of the soil ; weather, temperature, 
and rainfall ; and elementary industrial geography, 
under such captions as: (i) the farm a commercial 



234 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

center, (2) the history of the development of the farm, 
and (3) the industries of the community. Much the 
same can be said of arithmetic. One sees but little profit 
in farm boys' laboring over intricate problems in stocks 
and bonds and cube root, or struggling with weights 
and measures which tradition alone has kept in the 
books. Much better select the problem material from 
such practical themes as these : reckoning farm crops, 
threshing and harvesting problems, cost of growing crops, 
dairy problems, poultry, fencing, etc. 1 In a similar way 
history and civics may devote a reasonable amount of 
time to local rural government in its many phases. The 
same may be said of the other subjects in the course of 
study; they can all be taught with enough of the farm 
content to adapt them to rural civilization. 

Study of Rural Life in the School. — The needs of rural 
life should be taught in the schools. It is unnecessary to 
dignify such study either as rural sociology or as rural 
economics. It may all be done in an informal way in 
connection with other subjects. A good time for these 
discussions is the daily opening exercise, and such 
topics may form the central theme for the Friday 
afternoon exercises. Best adapted of all for these dis- 
cussions, perhaps, is the weekly literary society or lyceum, 
in which the teacher must be a leading spirit. Here the 
school and community meet on even terms. Patrons 
as well as children will attend. Surely, there is no better 
time or place than this to consider subjects of vital im- 
1 See Jessie Field's " Farm Arithmetic." 



THE CURRICULUM OF THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL 235 

portance to the farm! Let the discussions range over 
the whole field of cooperative buying and selling organi- 
zations, better means of transportation and communi- 
cation, farmers' organizations and clubs, farm labor, 
and public health. 

The curriculum as outlined in these pages, when 
properly taught, will put the student in harmony with 
his environment and prepare him for the leadership 
which is necessary before the great problem of life in 

the open country can be solved. 

H. W. F. 

SURVEY OF THE COMMUNITY WITH REFERENCE TO 
THE CURRICULUM OF THE SCHOOL 

What is meant by the rural life movement ? Do you distinguish 
between this movement and the "back to the farm" movement ? 
— Bailey's Country Life Movement, pp. 1-2, 23-26. 

Distinguish between " conservation," as generally understood, 
and the rural life movement. — Plunkett's Rural Life Problem, 
pp. 27-32. 

Enumerate and study the main agencies that are to be utilized 
in the solution of the rural life problem. — Butterfield's Country 
Church and Rural Problem, pp. 34-66, passim. 

Show clearly how no effort for rural betterment can hope to 
succeed till we get an educated leadership there. — Foght's 
American Rural School, pp. 13-16; Bailey's Country Life Move- 
ment, pp. 61-62. 

How is agriculture our dominant interest ? Relative to our 
total industry, does agriculture occupy as prominent a place to-day 
as half a century ago ? Explain Butterfield's Country Church, pp. 
1-6 ; Foght's Rural School, pp. 8-9. 

What is meant by the "unearned increment" of land ? Do you 



236 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

think that farming, in our country as a whole, is as profitable as it 
should be ? — Carver's Rural Economics, pp. 339-340. 

Show how the comparative barrenness in rural social life, caused 
chiefly by the exodus to the city, makes it more and more difficult 
to keep a population with right ideals on the farm. — Foght's 
Rural School, pp. 4-8; Plunkett's Rural Life Problem, Ch. Ill, 
passim. 

Explain carefully how the rural schools came to be neglected. 
What does Mr. Roosevelt's Commission mean by speaking of the 
"arrested development" of the schools? — Foght's Rural School, 
pp. 1-4; Report of the Commission on Country Life, pp. 121-122. 

The plea of the rural life workers is for a "new kind of a school" 
with a "redirected curriculum." Do you think that people as a 
whole feel the need of such schools ? What do teachers say ? 
— Report of the Commission on Country Life, p. 124. 

Read L. H. Bailey's The New School. — Outlook to Nature, pp. 
1 1 7-1 24. What, according to the writer, does the new education 
contemplate ? 

How are you able to meet the common objection that the school 
program is overcrowded already? Is it possible that ambitious 
teachers are even now robbing the beginners in school by giving 
time for high school subjects ? For example : should algebra, 
general history, etc., be taught in any one-teacher school? Ex- 
plain. — Bailey's Outlook to Nature, pp. 125-126. 

Explain : what is contemplated is not so much an addition of 
new subjects as a redirection of the old. — Foght's Rural School, 
pp. 22, I54-I55- 

Study these two problems: (a) Smith invests $3500 in U. S. 
3's at 104. What is his investment ? (b) How many pounds of 
milk, yielding 3! per cent butter fat, does it take to make 35 
pounds of butter, the overrun being 14 per cent ? Do these prob- 
lems show clearly the new trend? Which belongs to the new? 

Teacher, were you reared in the country ? Have you a genuine 
love for your nature environment ? Are you in honest sympathy 



THE CURRICULUM OF THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL 237 

with farm life ? How do you set about increasing this knowledge 
of environment ? Suggestion : read all the poetry you can find 
dealing with nature — not so much that which talks about nature 
as that which breathes nature. Read L. H. Bailey's poems found 
in "The Rural Outlook Set." 

Can you conceive of a happy and contented farm life where 
those on the farm are out of harmony with nature ? 

Is it true that American rural children are less in harmony with 
nature than the children of Continental Europe? How do you 
account for this ? What is the remedy ? — Foght's Rural School, 
pp. 154-155 ; Kern's Among Country Schools, pp. 34-36. 

Is there any danger of training a generation of sharpers in the 
rural schools — men who will own the soil chiefly because of its 
money-getting qualities ? Explain. 

What in the economic value of nature study appeals to the 
farmer? — Foght's Rural School, pp. 156-158. 

Do you know any person, man or woman, who is not a better 
social and moral being for having been brought into touch with 
the "small, still voice" of nature? How can you use the same 
"voice" in school? 

Explain : "To him who in the love of nature holds 

Communion with her visible forms, she speaks 
A various language. . . ." 

Do you think that as much culture may be gained from the na- 
turalist studies as from the old humanities? Explain yourself. 
— Bailey's Outlook to Nature, pp. 97-104. 

Why does it seem better to use the term nature-study agri- 
culture in preference to plain agriculture? — Bailey's The Nature 
Study Idea, pp. 93-101. 

How do you defend the statement that agriculture in the rural 
schools is not a concession to the farmers ? 

Explain how you teach agriculture. How much is textbook 
work ? Do you have a terrarium, window box, or other simple 
indoor laboratory ? What is your outdoor laboratory ? 



238 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

Make an inspection of the report of the Committee of Five, 
N. E. A., on Industrial Education in Schools for Rural Com- 
munities. Comment on the plan of five years of nature study 
to be followed in years 6, 7 and 8 with a course in agriculture. 
— Foght's Rural School, pp. 161-162. 

Study the school ground as a factor in rural life betterment. 
Is your school ground at least as attractive as the average home 
ground in the community? What immediate improvements are 
desirable ? How will you go about meeting them ? Have you 
birds and bird houses on the school grounds ? — Foght's Rural 
School, pp. 167-173; Kern's Among Country Schools, Ch. III. 

There are at least 80,000 school gardens in the United States. 
Are you the master of one of these? If not, give honest reasons 
why not. — Foght's Rural School, Ch. X; Kern's Among Country 
Schools, Ch. IV. 

How may you overcome the difficulties of looking after the 
school garden during vacation ? 

Study the children's home garden as a link between home and 
school. If the school garden is impracticable, this may take its 
place. Get and study the following Farmers' Bulletins from the 
United States Department of Agriculture: No. 154. The Home 
Fruit Garden; No. 218. The School Garden; No. 255. The 
Home and Vegetable Garden. 

The boys' and girls' growing and cooking clubs are perhaps the 
best means at the disposal of the rural school for creating a sym- 
pathetic relation with the home. Point out their educational 
advantages to the children. — Foght's Rural School, pp. 222-223. 

How can the community share in the club work ? Would you 
make the club-show the means of bringing into the community 
extension lecturers ? 

Would you sanction a pet stock and poultry show in connection 
with the club-show ? 

Are you able to compile for the farm home a list of good books 
on agriculture and club work ? a list of free bulletins from the 



THE CURRICULUM OF THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL 239 

U. S. Department of Agriculture or State College of Agriculture ? 
Let this be a test of your grasp on agriculture literature. If your 
state has a free traveling library system, have you a box of its 
books on agriculture and clubs in the school ? 

Show wherein manual training and domestic science will make 
farm pursuits more skillful and farm life more attractive. — Foght's 
Rural School, Ch. XII; Kern's Among Country Schools, Ch. XIV. 

What handwork would you suggest as feasible in any rural 
school ? Read of the informal work in manual training and do- 
mestic science done in many rural schools (see ref . under preced- 
ing topic). Can you do as much ? 

The rural teacher does not have a physician handy to give advice 
on every occasion and must therefore be his own medical inspector. 
Do you feel this responsibility ? Are you prepared for it ? — Allen's 
Civics and Health, pp. 283-292. 

Explain the relation of general intelligence to physical education. 

What should be the teacher's place in the struggle against 
disease ? Make a study of drinking cups, much-handled books, 
pencils, etc. How do you disinfect these ? — Foght's Rural School, 
pp. 282-292 ; Allen's Civics and Health, pp. 45-152, passim. 

Send to the United States Department of Agriculture for Farmers' 
Bulletin No. 270, entitled Modern Conveniences for the Farm 
Home. Study it, then procure copies for your patrons. 

Are you able to sit down in a farmer's home and discuss prob- 
lems of farm sanitation with such tact and unquestioned ability 
that your advice will be heeded ? Let this be a test of a good 
farm teacher. 

Have you some simple gymnastic apparatus on the playground ? 
If not, you and the older boys should be able to erect a swing, 
turning pole, climbing rope, and climbing pole outfit, giant stride, 
etc. Read Kern's Annual Report of Winnebago County for 1911. 

Play is necessary ; but it should be supervised play. Can you 
supervise the play activities in person without spending all 
your intermission time on the playground ? 



240 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

Show clearly the relation of wholesome physical exercise to 
school morals. — Foght's Rural School, pp. 300-301. 

State concisely what is meant by "new leaven in the old sub- 
jects in the rural school curriculum." 

What can you do to give a "redirection" to arithmetic? 
geography? physiology? reading? English? 

Were you trained in a school offering special courses in rural 
life problems ? That is, have you a good knowledge of what is 
necessary to give the much needed reforms in our rural com- 
munities ? Strengthen your knowledge along these lines by read- 
ing the more important rural life books enumerated in the bibli- 
ography given below. 

Point out the value of rural life study as a part of the informal 
work in the rural school. 

Show the value of a discussion of such topics as these at the 
Friday afternoon exercises or the evening debating society: 
better means of communicaton ; the grange and similar social 
organizations ; new home conveniences in the farm home ; and 
cooperative buying and selling organizations. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Books 

Bailey, Liberty H. Cyclopedia of American Agriculture. 

The Nature Study Idea. 

The Outlook to Nature. 

The State and the Farmer. 

The Country Life Movement. 
Beard, Augustus Field. The Story of John Frederick Oberlin. 
Buell, Jennie. One Woman' 's Work for Farm Women. 
Butterfield, Kenyon L. Chapters in Rural Progress. 
Commission on Country Life, Report of. 
Davenport, Eugene. Education for Efficiency. 
Dodd, Mrs. Helen. The Healthful Farmhouse. 



THE CURRICULUM OF THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL 24 1 

Field, Jessie. The Com Lady. 
Farm Arithmetic. 

Foght, Harold W. The American Rural School. 

Gilman and Williams. Seat Work and Industrial Occupations. 

Gulick Hygiene Series. Town and City. 

Hapgood. School Needlework. 

Hemenway, H. D. How to Make School Gardens. 

Kern, 0. J. Among Country Schools. 

Plunkett, Sir Horace. The Rural Life Problem of the United 
States. 

Roberts, Isaac Phillips. The Farmstead. 

The Farmer's Business Handbook. 

Van Hise, Charles R. The Conservation of Natural Resources in 
the United States. 

Ward, Clarence M. Farm Friends and Farm Foes. 

Bailey, L. H. On the Training of Persons to Teach Agriculture in 
the Public Schools. Bureau of Education, Washington, D.C. 

Crosby, Dick J. Bibliography of Nature Study, School Gardening, 
and Elementary A griculture for Common Schools. Department 
of Agriculture, Circular 52, Washington, D.C. 

Crosby, Dick J. Boys' Agricultural Clubs. Yearbook Depart- 
ment of Agriculture, 1904. Washington, D.C. 

Crosby, Dick J. How may the Rural Schools be more Closely 
Related to the Life and Needs of the People. N. E. A. Journal 
of Proceedings and Addresses. (1909.) 

Hayes, Willett M. Education for Country Life. Department 
of Agriculture; Circular 84, Washington, D.C. 

Jewell, James R. Agricultural Education. Including Nature 
Study and School Gardens. Bureau of Education, Wash- 
ington, D.C. (Revised, 1909.) 

Knorr, Geo. W. Consolidated Rural Schools and Organization 
of a County System. Department of Agriculture Bulletin 
232, Washington, D.C. 

National Society for the Study of Education. Tenth yearbook, 



242 



EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 



No. 
No. 
No. 
No. 
No. 86 
No. 112 



191 1, Part II. The Rural School as a Community Center. 
Univ. of Chicago Press. $0.75. 
Rural Life Bulletin for IQ12. State Normal School, Kirksville, 

Mo. 
Rural Life Bulletins for igio and ign. University of Virginia, 

Charlottesville, Va. 
Scudder, Myron T. The Field Day and Play Picnic for Country 
Schools. Pub. of Playground Asso. of America. 
Sundry Numbered Bulletins. Department of Agriculture, 
Washington, D. C. : 
No. 28, Weeds and How to Kill Them. 

Some Common Birds in their Relation to Agriculture. 

Care of Milk on the Farm. 

Milk as a Food. 

Education for Country Life. 

Thirty Poisonous Plants. 

Bread and Principles of Bread Making. 
No. 113, The Apple and how to Grow it. 
No. 126. Practical Suggestions for Farm Buildings. 
No. 134, Tree Planting on Rural School Grounds. 
No. 142, Principles of Nutrition and Nutritive Value of Food. 
No. 149, Corn Growing. 
No. 157, The Propagation of Plants. 
No. 173, The Primer of Forestry. 
No. 185, Beautifying the Home Grounds. 
No. 187, Drainage of Farm Lands. 
No. 188, Weeds used in Medicine. 
No. 192, Barnyard Manure. 
No. 194, Alfalfa Seed. 
No. 215, Alfalfa Growing. 
No. 218, The School Garden. 
No. 228, Forest Planting and Farm Management. 
No. 229, Production of Good Seed Corn. 
No. 248, The Lawn. 



THE CURRICULUM OF THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL 243 

No. 249, Cereal Breakfast Foods. 

No. 253, Germination of Seed Corn. 

No. 255, The Home Vegetable Garden. 

No. 270, Modern Conveniences for the Farm Home. 

No. 278, Legumes for Green Manure. 

No. 298, Food Value of Corn and Corn Products. 

No. 315, Progress in Legume Inoculation. 

No. 321, The Use of the Split-log Drag on Earth Roads. 

Magazine Articles 

American Education, 10:439-46, March, 1907. Some Economic 
and Social Aspects of the Rural School Problem. 

Atlantic School Journal, beginning Vol. IV, No. 6, 1909. Some 
Problems of the Rural School Situation. 

Education, 24: 74-80, October, 1903. The School as a Factor in 
Industrial and Social Problems. 

Independent, 68: 1146-48, May 26, 1910. Health in Country Life. 

Outlook, 91:823-825, April 10, 1909. Life of Farmer: A Sym- 
posium. 

Outlook, February 5, 1910. Southern Boys' Corn Clubs. 

Survey, 22 : 640-649, August 7, 1909. The Little Red Schoolhouse. 

Survey, 94: 891-901, April 23, 1910. Children of the Land. 

Survey, 94: 841-844, April 16, 1910. New Life on the Farm. 

School and Home Education, 28: 90-94, November, 1908. Country 
Life and the Country School. 

Virginia Journal of Education, The, Vol. I (1909) , 1-6. Community 
Service and the Public Schools. 

Western Journal of Education (Michigan), 1 : 159-160, April, 
1908. An Ideal District School. 

World's Work, 2 : 719. Actual Rural Independence. 

World's Work, 7 : 4179. The New Farmer and a New Earth. 

World's Work, 17 : 10970. On the Soil. 

World's Work, 17 : 11417. What the Country School must Become. 



CHAPTER XVI 

COMMUNITY ACTIVITY IN THE ADMINIS- 
TRATION OF EDUCATION 

The Rising Movement of the Consolidation of Rural 
Schools. — The rapidly exfoliating civilization of the 
past half century has led to general social and economic 
readjustments. Although the tendency has been more 
and more to place social institutions upon a basis of 
scientific adjustments and relations, to discover new 
relations, and to create new social values in these re- 
adjustments, the rural school has been overlooked. The 
neglect which it has suffered was partly due to its isola- 
tion, and partly to a statesmanship which had strangely 
and mistakenly regarded the country school as a purely 
local institution, failing to see that the country school 
owes certain responsibilities to the State, and that its 
place as a country-life institution is not merely incidental, 
but fundamental. So it happened that at the beginning 
of the twentieth century the rural school was practically 
still in the early nineteenth century. Here and there, 
in widely separated localities, farmers had begun to look 
with disfavor upon the then existing country schools. 
They entertained ideals which the small school did not 

entirely fill. Thousands of these schools were absolutely 

244 



THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL 245 

static, as other thousands are at this moment ; other 
thousands were slowly losing ground and found them- 
selves with dwindling attendance, lacking in super- 
vision, with small enthusiasm, poor equipments, and with 
underpaid and at times inferior teachers. Long even 
before the farmers had taken active steps, progressive 
educators had advocated large educational units for 
country districts. Caleb Mills, the State School Super- 
intendent of Indiana, as early as 1859, advocated the 
formation of large undivided districts and consoli- 
dation of small districts before understanding legislative 
committees and farmers. But it was without avail so 
long as those constituencies were not receptive to the 
idea of school consolidation. No form of school can be 
forced upon communities unwilling to accept it. The 
idea of combining several district schools into one cen- 
trally located one was first carried out by Superintendent 
F. E. Eaton, of Concord, Mass., in 1869. He pro- 
vided conveyances for the pupils of four district schools 
to the town school in Concord. The undertaking, 
although bitterly opposed by some patrons, succeeded, 
and the school wagons have rendered service continuously 
to this day, and the splendid " Emerson School " in the 
city of Concord stands a monument to Superintendent 
Eaton's wisdom. The success of this experiment was 
the signal for the beginning of a general movement of 
rural school consolidation, or, more correctly, rural school 
redirection in Massachusetts and other states. The 
idea of abolishing by vote the district schools of an entire 



246 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

township and of merging them into one central school 
originated later, in 1894, in northeastern Ohio. It was 
there that the possibility of systems of consolidated 
schools, embracing entire counties, first suggested it- 
self. 

This in turn led to a new viewpoint of the county and 
the organization of the country community. In the 
light of broad and comprehensive plans for the reor- 
ganization of our agriculture, the open country is coming 
to be regarded not as a vast aggregation of individual 
farmsteads, but of large complexes of farms and farm 
homes — country communities each with its own inter- 
nal interests, social organization, and community con- 
science. This typical modern rural community com- 
prises between 100 and 200 farms, and covers an area 
of 15 or 20 up to 40 square miles. It may be a township, 
or arbitrary district, whose area is determined by the 
distance of a convenient team haul to a strategic local 
point at which the school is located, or it may be formed 
by merging or consolidating a group of small detached 
school districts into one large district. Accordingly, 
these schools are designated consolidated schools and 
the supporting districts, consolidated school districts. 
Centralized school is a term currently used in Ohio. 
It is to be hoped that in time the terms " Farm School " 
or " Country Life School " will find acceptance among 
farmers. As some of the educable children in the con- 
solidated school district will unavoidably live beyond 
walking distance, conveyances, the cost of which is de- 



THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL 247 

frayed out of public funds, must be provided. The 
school wagon routes should be the longest possible, con- 
sistent with prompt, regular, and safe service. They 
would tend to be shorter on poor roads and in hilly 
and broken country, longer on good roads and in level 
and prairie country. 

The Consolidated School as a Country Life Institu- 
tion. — The consolidated school buildings in many 
places, being centrally located and convenient of access, 
serve splendidly for purposes of community halls, 
and have become important and useful factors in build- 
ing up country life. They are common meeting ground 
upon which members of a community of considerable 
size can meet, regardless of religious, political, or social 
complexions. Our rural population, as a defensive 
measure, to save itself from becoming merely a laboring 
class for the nonresident landowner or of an incorpo- 
rated agriculture, must become an efficient, many armed 
cooperation. And it is a legitimate activity of the con- 
solidated school to train deeply and thoroughly our 
country youth in team work and cooperative work of 
every form. 

Descriptions and Definitions. — That " consolidated 
school " may stand for the same thing everywhere, and 
not for one thing in one place and for something else in 
another place ; it is necessary to lay down some defini- 
tions. The consolidated school fits admirably into the 
scheme of American country life, and contains within 
it all the elements of a comprehensive and permanent 



248 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

national system of education and should therefore repre- 
sent a definite force, never " standardized " let us hope, 
but always recognizable by certain features of admin- 
istration, function, and purpose. Another reason why 
a uniform nomenclature is desirable is that consider- 
able state legislation is certain to grow up around this 
new country life institution as regards state aid, taxation, 
vocational studies, such as agriculture and home eco- 
nomics, administration, and district formation. The 
distinctive feature which all consolidated schools have 
in common is enlarged unit of area of the community 
supporting it, — the consolidated school district. As to 
certain details of organization and administration and 
content, consolidated schools differ just as their respec- 
tive districts differ in wealth, in individuality, in view- 
point, in topography, in density of population, homes, 
etc. Some county superintendents have found it possible 
in various localities to combine one, two, or three small 
schools by inducing some of the pupils to walk slightly 
greater, but not unreasonable, distances. Notwith- 
standing the fact that they remain the same one-room, 
one-teacher school they were before, they are frequently 
referred to as " consolidated schools " — an unfortu- 
nate misapplication of the word. Such confusion should 
be avoided. The writer, therefore, proposes the univer- 
sal use of the terms according to the following definitions 
which recognize, strictly speaking, only two types of 
consolidated schools. Clearness of discussion will be 
greatly facilitated thereby and statistics of consolidated 



THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL 249 

schools from the different states and from counties within 
the same state will become comparable. 1 

The Typical Consolidated School or Farm School. — 
Four or five rooms and teachers ; a seven or eight year 
elementary course with a two, three, or four years' high 
school course. The school must have at least two school 
wagons for carrying pupils living remotely. 

The Consolidated Graded School. — Two, three, or 
four rooms, a regular seven or eight year primary or ele- 
mentary course but no high school, and has at least one 
wagon for conveying pupils. 

Union Schools. — A one-room school into which one 
or more small one-room schools near by have been 
merged ; it may or may not employ a school wagon for 
conveyance. 

Complete Consolidation. — Refers to a condition 
where all district schools or a township or other large 
unit or community are consolidated into one central 
school, partial consolidation where only a few of the 
schools of a township or district are consolidated, part 
remaining out as district schools. 

Conveyance of Rural Children to School at Public Ex- 
pense. — Gathering together the children of a township or 
consolidated school district at a central school creates an 

1 The writer has in earlier publications suggested the use of a uni- 
form nomenclature. 

" Consolidation of Rural Schools and Organization of a County Sys- 
tem," Bui. 232 O. E. S., United States Department of Agriculture, 1910, 
"A Study of Fifteen Consolidated Rural Schools, Their Organization. 
Cost, Efficiency, and Affiliated Interest," Washington, D.C., 1911. 



250 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

entirely new environment for them, and places them in 
a larger field of activity than they knew in the district 
school ; they become aware that they are in attendance 
at an institution which has prestige, power, and dignity. 
This largely accounts for the splendid school spirit one 
finds prevalent in so many consolidated schools. The 
circle of acquaintance of each child is enlarged nearly 
twelvefold, and from the time he enters school he moves 
within a larger radius of action. The pupil in this 
school knows more of the local geography, knows more 
about the farms, crops, live stock and buildings, is more 
fully in touch with the life and meaning of the com- 
munity, makes more friends and has more rivals than 
the pupils in the small school. He has no opportunity 
to get to school too early, nor any possible excuse for 
being tardy. Many of the difficulties which are apt 
to arise where pupils walk to school are entirely over- 
come, such as swearing, obscene language, loitering, and 
the use of tobacco. 

The organization of the school wagon service differs 
with various schools. Thus the wagons may be owned 
publicly by the school, or the school board or county, 
or they may be owned privately, by the drivers. The 
drivers as a rule are carefully selected, sober, responsible 
persons. Upon their good sense and tact depends much 
of the success of the school. There is not an American 
community where such persons may not be found. The 
person assuming the contract to transport the children 
should be required to give bond for faithful performance 



THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL 251 

of duties, and should be required to do the driving per- 
sonally. Substituting farm help, or big boys in school 
to do the driving is liable to work out unsatisfactorily. 
Substitution should not be allowed without permission 
from the president of the board. The service is paid 
by the month, or by the day, or by the number of chil- 
dren hauled. The latter plan usually works well in 
states without compulsory attendance laws, or where 
their enforcement is lax. The driver usually manages 
to haul a full attendance. Improved roads are a very 
helpful factor in running school wagons regularly and on 
schedule time, and every wagon route should have a 
carefully prepared schedule to which the drivers must 
hold, reporting to the principal upon the arrival at the 
school. Some of the best consolidated schools in the 
country are located in sections where the roads are prac- 
tically all dirt roads. Where roads are very bad and 
the climate severe there is all the better reason for pro- 
viding conveyance for the children. Where children 
walk, colds and sickness from exposure, drenched clothes, 
and wet feet are considerably more prevalent than the 
unobservant realize, and are often responsible for the 
low attendance at school. Some consolidated schools 
convey the pupils of the elementary classes or grades only, 
requiring the high school pupils to provide their own 
transportation ; but the schools offering the privilege 
of free conveyance to all pupils have generally the best 
and most regular attendance. 

School wagons may be purchased of manufacturers 



252 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

at from $200 to $250 ; but serviceable vehicles can be 
constructed by local shops at a lower figure. Use of 
vehicles without springs should not be allowed, and 
frequent inspection should be made for safety and 
general state of repair. 

Conveyance of rural pupils at public expense is recog- 
nized by the school laws of practically all states. But 
where not specially provided for, the courts generally 
are inclined to construe very broadly the duties of boards 
under the " best interests of the school " clause. Higher 
courts have recognized in practically every instance of 
appeal the right of school boards to provide conveyance 
paid from public funds. Objectors consider the cost 
of the conveyance system as the most serious fault of 
consolidation. The cost of conveyance per pupil per 
year varies with local conditions, ranging approximately 
between $12 and $23 and averaging about $18. The 
total expenditure made for conveyance per school may 
amount to from one fifth to one half of the total 
annual current expenditure. Is such expenditure jus- 
tified? Two other questions will answer it. Is there 
any way in which the excellent results of the consoli- 
dated school can be obtained without transportation? 
How can there be consistent objection on the score of 
expense, when all the money paid for conveyance re- 
mains in the township or district ? Does not the money, 
public or private, paid out for railroad fares and board, 
and high school tuition in distant towns and cities leave 
the township and district ? Is a school district which is 



THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL 253 

bent upon economizing its expenditures to keep down 
the tax rate justified in economy plans which cheapen 
its schools ? Is it right to begin economy on the educa- 
tion of the boys and girls ? 

In the course of a school survey in Trumbull county, 
Ohio, statistics were gathered in a number of townships 
having only district schools, and in an equal number of 
townships having only consolidated schools. On the 
basis of certain of these statistics collected with special 
reference as to cost of schooling pupils in consolidated 
and district schools, it was found : 

That large numbers of district schools expend consid- 
erably more on schooling per pupil, per day, than the 
best consolidated schools having high schools. 

That a certain class of district schools answering to 
specific qualifications, and receiving state aid expended 
21.3 cents per pupil per day, while typical consolidated 
schools expended 22.5 cents per pupil per day. 

That in the former, pupils walked and had no high 
school, while in the latter pupils enjoyed local high school 
advantages and had public conveyance. 

That the cost of maintenance of one consolidated school 
is greater than that of the total of the district schools 
composing it. 

That the increased cost is indirectly ascribable to 
conveyance, because it increases the attendance. 

That increased attendance, better school equipment, 
supervision by a principal, better teachers, the ad- 
vantage of a high school accessible to every child in the 



254 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

community, are in effect economies, and as these can be 
obtained in no other way than through consolidation, the 
small increased expenditure is in reality an investment. 

That section of the country where farm land is worth 
upward of $40 per acre may safely and advantageously 
enter upon consolidation ; or stating it in another way, 
any rural community having a tax valuation of from 
$500,000 up may undertake to establish typical con- 
solidated schools. 

In no way can states invest money for education 
in the open country more effectively than by offering 
liberal aid to consolidated schools answering to certain 
qualifications. A sum of $1500 per school per year for 
a period of five years, and its expenditure confined 
strictly to the teaching of agriculture and home economics 
in the upper elementary and the high school grades 
would so greatly improve the internal conditions of even 
the less prosperous communities that at the expiration 
of the aid period, outside assistance would scarcely be 
needed. The number of communities availing them- 
selves of this aid would at no time be large and so the 
amount expended by the state for this purpose would 
not be large in the aggregate nor would the appropria- 
tion be a permanent one. Is the greater initial cost 
of consolidated schools a really serious objection to the 
general adoption of the system? In view of the fact 
that the hundred or more of small one-room school build- 
ings in the county are constantly depreciating and are 
constant objects of expense for repairs, are not fifteen 



THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL 255 

or twenty substantial consolidated schoolhouses a better 
permanent investment ? 

The amount of funds raised by taxation by consoli- 
dated school districts for the support of their schools is, 
generally speaking, larger than that raised by the one- 
room districts. Owing to this larger contribution the 
consolidated school naturally commands a stronger local 
interest, there grows up greater local pride and a sense 
of ownership, and especially is this true in the open 
country where, as is often the case, the school building 
is the most conspicuous landmark, for miles around. 
Once the building is paid for, the cost of maintenance 
will scarcely exceed that of the combined original dis- 
trict schools. It may be well at this place to caution 
communities and townships against the mistake of 
erecting too ornate and expensive structures. Of course 
the natural wealth and resources of the community must 
determine how much should be so invested, but few 
country communities really have need for buildings 
costing as high as forty thousand dollars. A very serv- 
iceable five-room brick building accommodating 200 
pupils can be built for from twelve to fifteen thousand 
dollars, and in sections where lumber is abundant, three 
or five thousand dollars will erect a building which will 
do splendid service. In no building plan should the 
communal social needs be ignored ; ample hall provisions 
should be made to encourage and develop them. 

Although in the consolidated schools in Trumbull 
county, Ohio, compulsory attendance is very rigidly 



256 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

enforced, pupils in district schools in those communities 
drop out upon reaching the limit of age of school attend- 
ance, but continue much longer in consolidated schools. 
And this dropping out process is so marked that, taking 
the township as a whole, the consolidated school enrolls 
26.5 per cent more of the children of school age than the 
district school. In the consolidated school a larger per 
cent of the total elementary enrollment was in daily 
attendance ; to be exact there was an increase of 15.4 per 
cent. There was an increase of 127.3 P er cent ^ ^ ne 
high school attendance. 1 

These findings are of immense importance as suggesting 
the far-reaching changes a state can effect by means of 
a fully organized consolidated rural school system. 
They point the way in which the rural population of a 
state can in a few years attain a high average educational 
preparation; such a state might conceivably gain a 
decided leadership over other states not only in agri- 
cultural production, but industrially and even politically. 

The School District in the Village and the Open 
Country. — Those who know how school districts are 
usually formed are well aware that seldom do far-seeing 
purpose or logic enter into the operation. Expediency 
is almost the rule. The small individualistic school dis- 
trict is the result and concomitant of the individualistic 
farmer. But the isolation of the farm is rapidly being 

1 See Bui. 232 O. E. S., United States Department of Agriculture. 
These figures do not represent merely local conditions, but reflect fairly 
conditions in rural schools generally. 



THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL 257 

broken down and individualism is making way for the 
entrance of individualism with cooperation, and the 
growth of the consolidation sentiment is evidence that 
the rural school system is in a fair way of being built 
up along that line. The rural school is a rural need, 
and the school district should be organized to conform 
to that need. 

During an educational history of 130 years the dis- 
trict school has not succeeded in educating a vocationally 
efficient class of farmers, and the country over we are 
still confronted with that problem. In the past forty 
years there has been an increase of one half bushel per 
acre in the corn yield, while the yield of wheat has fallen 
off two bushels. The use of artificial fertilizers is on the 
increase and the area of soil depletion is steadily en- 
larging and moving westward. The per acre yields of 
other farm crops are making no appreciable gains. The 
little rural school has also witnessed the decadence of 
rural social life and the exodus to the city. While not 
directly responsible for the conditions mentioned, it 
has done practically nothing to correct them in even 
slight degree. Perhaps the chief reason why the district 
school is losing its influence in rural affairs is its increasing 
maladjustment with rural life. It performs its duties 
perfunctorily and it is neither a vital nor a dynamic 
factor in the rural community. Because of a large 
amount of duplication of equipment in the more or less 
than 100 rural schools in the county, the supporting 
district is in most cases too small and too inflexible a unit 



258 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

to be successfully administered either financially or 
educationally. There is constant competition among 
districts for territory. In portions of the county where 
the school population is on the increase there is a pressure 
for the creation of more districts by partition ; where 
school population is on the decrease, there is generally 
a decided disinclination to discontinue schools with 
small attendance, and schools have been known to re- 
open year after year with half a dozen and even fewer 
pupils. Within the same county one may find districts 
with large tax valuation and ample funds, adjacent to 
districts with low tax valuation, and correspondingly 
low income for school purposes. Tardiness and irregular 
attendance are characteristic of rural district schools 
everywhere. School patrons and parents are not gen- 
erally fully cognizant of conditions as regards their school. 
The optimism that their own local school is the one 
favorable exception in almost every respect is quite as 
general as it is sincere. In the very locality in the mid- 
dle west, for instance, where the writer was informed with 
the greatest assurance that " the farmers in this county 
are all prosperous, there is not a home that does not 
furnish the children with all the horses and vehicles 
needed to attend school daily; attendance in all our 
schools is good, we don't need consolidation," there was 
found on examination of the records that in some of the 
schools the average attendance for the year was as low as 
30 per cent of the enrollment and the yearly average of 
attendance for the entire county was only 61.4 per cent. 



THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL 259 

In other words, there is no substitute for public convey- 
ance of school children which the district school can 
employ to increase its attendance permanently. 

The One-room School as the Administrative Unit. — 
The condition of independence and detachment of these 
unrelated units makes any kind of cooperation with 
similar and adjacent units difficult, and especially stands 
in the way of consolidation. Its failure to provide 
a local high school for the rural youth, its insuffi- 
ciency as a base of taxation to raise funds for de- 
fraying the cost of such educational advantages as 
ambitious and intelligent farming communities nowa- 
days seek to provide for their young men and women, is 
to-day felt as its most serious defect. The same criticism 
applies to some of the schools in smaller rural villages. 
Another factor which frequently adds to the difficulty 
of solution of both the village and rural school problems 
is the creation of " special " or " independent " school 
districts. Whereas consolidation of the districts of a 
larger rural community with that of the rural village 
would provide sufficient revenues for the erection and 
maintenance of a large, strong, vigorous graded school 
with a local high school, the independent village district 
actually limits itself and keeps its own school from grow- 
ing out into a strong, efficient institution, capable of carry- 
ing out a progressive educational program. Where the 
village happens to be the logical center of consolidation 
the " special district " is a hindrance to bringing the 
outlying rural district into consolidation with the village 



260 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

district. " Special village school districts " may be 
hurtful to near-by district schools in still another way, 
in that they draw pupils from them, many farmers pre- 
ferring to pay tuition and to send their children to the 
graded or semigraded village school rather than to 
their own one-room school which they may consider 
unsatisfactory. This perhaps in a large measure ac- 
counts for the fact that in sections with static population 
one may find more of abandoned district schools near 
towns than out in the open country. The village does 
not care to tax itself for the benefit of the country dis- 
tricts which may have a low valuation of taxable prop- 
erty and contribute a proportionately smaller amount 
while sending to school more children. Often an in- 
tolerant local spirit is responsible for the separation of 
the interests of village and country. Conditions such 
as these check perforce development of schools and of 
other local institutions which tend to promote the social, 
intellectual, and economic interests of both country and 
village. The consolidated school tends to unite and 
strengthen those interests. 

Would not the consolidated school also stop with 
one stroke many of the neighborhood differences and 
quarrels which often are so detrimental to the success 
of the small country school and which negative the best 
efforts of the teacher? Is it not humiliating to some 
communities that the domination of the " influential 
citizen " should often amount almost to proprietorship? 
Why should the district school, often the only public 



THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL 26 1 

institution in the township, be named after the farmer 
upon whose lot the building happens to be located and 
the school referred to as " Mr. Layson's school," " Old 
man Grubber's school," etc. ? The district school is 
heir to these weakening influences by nature of its or- 
ganization. It is so narrowly localized that it represents 
only a fraction of the community and it is too sensi- 
tively responsive to whatever goes on within its small 
sphere. Ultimately about 250,000 small rural schools 
in the open country will yield to the pressure of new 
social and economic conditions and go into consolidation 
in groups of six to ten, forming about 25,000 country 
life institutions known as consolidated schools or country 
life schools. The remaining 80,000 district schools will 
continue as such in all places where topographical and 
geographical conditions will not permit consolidation 
and conveyance of pupils, but they will be vitalized and 
benefited by the spirit of the consolidated schools from 
which will come the majority of their teachers. 

The Consolidated School as the Administrative 
School Unit. — In most cases where a merger of one- 
room districts is effected, the tendency is to regard con- 
solidation as a matter concerning only the ones parti- 
cipating. Relations to other school units in the county 
are liable to be disregarded and consolidation may pro- 
ceed planlessly. Matters of taxation, roads, topography, 
distribution of population, and soil conditions enter into 
the problem and need to be carefully considered. 

It is significant that the greatest and most substantial 



262 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

progress in school consolidation has been made in states 
in which the township or county is the administrative 
school unit ; the least progress in those states in which 
the small district is the administrative school unit. 
Where the township is the unit its boundary is con- 
terminous with that of the consolidated school district. 
Occasionally it happens that topographical conditions 
will hinder complete consolidation of all the schools 
in a township, necessitating for a time a continuance of 
the one or two district schools. Under a county system 
such districts can conveniently be attached to a consoli- 
dated school in an adjoining township or even county. 
It is worthy of note that wherever consolidated schools 
have displaced the small district schools, the loss of the 
latter has in no case been felt. With the exception 
of three or four consolidated schools, where bad planning 
or inefficient management was palpably evident, no com- 
munity has ever returned to the old system. Consoli- 
dated schools are now in operation to a greater or less 
extent in every state of the Union, including the Canal 
Zone. The 2000 typical and consolidated graded schools 
in successful operation may be regarded as so many 
successful experiments by rural communities, from which 
others may benefit if they desire. The American farmer 
has every reason to be proud of creating a new dis- 
tinctively American institution. 

The County System Most Effective in the Administra- 
tion of the Country School. — The consolidated school 
is an important factor in the solution of what, for want 



THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL 263 

of a better designation, is called the " country life prob- 
lem." Until about three decades ago there seemed to 
have been no country life problem ; conditions as they 
arose were met by some makeshift policy here, some piece- 
meal legislation there. Our school laws even are the 
results of very many efforts, by many persons, and can 
scarcely be characterized as the crystallization of a clear- 
cut philosophy conscious of a definite aim and purpose. 
Through the consolidated school, has the idea of the 
community as the basis of country life organization and 
as the vehicle of all country life activities, risen to the 
dignity of a well-defined philosophy, and assumed an 
importance never before realized. The substantial 
building of four, five, or more rooms, its permanence, 
its local influence, the considerable territory and number 
of families it serves, are all factors which suggest the 
necessity of most systematic planning of well-balanced 
districts; not each separately, but each with regard to 
all other districts in the county. To locate several or 
even only one consolidated school at an illogical point, 
or to plan a number of districts much too small in size, 
would inevitably lead to encroachment of territory, 
to duplication of school work, possibly to friction be- 
tween districts because of administrative difficulties. 
Hence the necessity of starting from the largest possible 
administrative base, of disregarding present civic di- 
visions and redisricting the territory in question with 
an eye wholly to educational needs. The conviction 
is quite generally growing that the county is the most 



264 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

suitable unit for purposes of school administration, re- 
gardless of whether the ultimate unit be the one-room 
school district or the township, or the consolidated school 
district. Under the county unit plan school affairs are 
usually administered by a county board of which the 
superintendent of schools is the executive officer. As 
there is in the county a larger population from which 
to select this important body, better forces and greater 
ability can be brought together, than in the district with 
only a score or more of families. The intensively indi- 
vidualistic administration of the small district gives 
place to a cooperation of the most capable, intelligent, 
and interested leaders. Busy persons who would not for 
a moment consider the offer of a trusteeship in a district 
school, consider it an honor to be selected to the member- 
ship of a county school board or the board of a consoli- 
dated school. The system in vogue in Indiana is at- 
tended by excellent results. Briefly, it is as follows : 
township trustees are elected for four years; besides 
other duties these officials have charge of the roads 
and of the rural schools ; all the township trustees in the 
county constitute the county school board which elects 
the superintendent of schools who holds office during 
four years. He is usually reelected at the pleasure 
of the board. Politics play a very minor part in the 
selection of the superintendent. Trustees as well as 
county superintendents are almost without exception 
men of ability and worth. 

Under the county system an equitable distribution 



THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL 265 

of school funds is effected, a county board is always re- 
sponsive to local demands, and is in position to take the 
initiative in any general movement for school better- 
ment ; isolated schools are less likely to suffer neglect, 
and cooperation among schools is made easy. 

The consolidated school increases the importance 
of the county superintendent. It makes larger demands 
on him in the way of executive ability, resourcefulness, 
leadership and professional preparation. The politician 
superintendent, who is such a dead weight on the rural 
schools, is sure to be eliminated. On the other hand, 
there are placed at the superintendent's command means 
which enable him to emphasize his leadership. In place 
of visiting ioo or 150 separate small schools scattered 
over the county, he concentrates his time and attention on 
the fifteen, twenty, or as the case may be, thirty consoli- 
dated schools ; time which was spent in traversing coun- 
try roads is used in supervision of the teachers' work, for 
he now has days to devote to work in each school, whereas 
before he had hours only ; his work where consolidation 
is to be carried into effect is largely constructive. The 
short terms of office customary in many states need to be 
lengthened to terms of satisfactory service in order to 
enable the county to fully utilize the ability of super- 
intendents with exceptional executive and constructive 
talent. A board, responsible to the public, usually 
secures a more capable class of county superintendents 
than does an election. Is it good business policy to take 
them out of this work every two or four years ? Does one 



266 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

change architects several times in the course of construc- 
tion of an important public building ? Is the importance 
of the person who has charge of the schooling of 3000 or 
4000 country children in the' county not commonly 
underrated ? 

The matter of locating the school building is at times 
attended with difficulties because of the diversity of local 
and personal interests involved. The correct judgment in 
most cases lies in locating it in the geographic center of 
the district. Villages or rural towns will often be found 
convenient centers. Where division of opinion is too 
divergent, it may be wise to consult an outsider experi- 
enced in such work ; his counsel may be more acceptable 
than that of a resident. By redistricting the entire 
county at one time, a more logical and better balanced 
plan is usually arrived at than by cutting off district 
after district. Each district may then consolidate its 
school at any time it may choose. If any prefer to 
remain unconsolidated, they may do so without impair- 
ing the general plan. The superintendent of schools of 
every county where consolidation is practicable, should 
have at least a tentative plan of consolidation of schools 
mapped out so that even if the execution of the plan in 
its entirety be not immediately in prospect, the centers 
of possible consolidation may be accorded sympathetic 
recognition. By degrees these can be allowed to absorb 
near-by schools as they weaken. 

A Vitalized Country Community. — The consolidated 
school is adapted as no other form of school, for carrying 



THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL 267 

to the bulk of the six millions of boys and girls growing up 
on the farms of this country the large body of knowledge 
relating to agriculture and home economics, made avail- 
able by the scientists in experiment stations of this and 
other countries. The consolidated and village rural 
schools provide almost ideal conditions under which 
farm management can be taught in a vital way to very 
large numbers of pupils — fully twice the number that 
can be reached in district schools. These schools, being 
close to the soil and native, can vitalize class work re- 
lating to field crops, farm accounts, stock feeding, and so 
on, and can supplement in a most effective way the home 
apprenticeship of the boy and girl on the farm. The 
largest part, perhaps 75 per cent, of rural education 
rests on the rural schools — they will always have to 
take care of that much ; high schools and colleges will 
take care of the remaining part. The system of one- 
room schools, becoming obsolete, is so organized that 
it not only fails to reach down and through real life, 
so as to bring vocational instruction and vocational 
guidance to the 93 per cent who do not go farther than 
the elementary school, but that it also fails to articulate 
with schools which do supply these important educa- 
tional elements. The consolidated school not only 
overcomes the defect of lack of articulation, but voca- 
tional agricultural and home economics instruction is 
being introduced with gratifying success and with every 
prospect that those 93 per cent in need of it can be and 
will be reached ; and that every important fact and every 



268 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

new discovery in agriculture or in home economics can 
thus be carried to the school in the open country and 
thence to the farm. 

In this connection a type of secondary school which 
has developed in recent years, and which promises to 
become a potent factor in a country life education, is of 
extreme interest; namely, the agricultural high school, 
located at a conveniently accessible point within and 
comprising a five or ten county district or a congres- 
sional district. These large, well-equipped institutions 
articulate with the consolidated schools below and 
the agricultural colleges above and occupy a position in- 
termediate between the two. The courses of study of 
these schools are designed to prepare the farm boy 
and girl to return to the farm as farmers and home 
makers and to become local leaders. These schools 
have attached to them farms, usually of several hundred 
acres, herds of different breeds of pure-bred farm animals, 
modern farm buildings, creameries, a large faculty of 
specialists, and a large and vigorous student body. The 
best examples of this type of school are at present to be 
found in Minnesota and Nebraska. There are in all 
about seventy-five in the United States. Eventually 
400 of these institutions will be built up. 

The county agricultural high school is another form of 
secondary school in which agriculture is taught. It 
usually fills the place also of county high school. It nec- 
essarily has less equipment, a smaller faculty, is less 
inspirational and vital, than the larger agricultural high 



THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL 269 

school. Owing to comparative ease of access the 
county agricultural high schools favor a strong attend- 
ance, from the immediate surroundings, and are, there- 
fore, inimical to the development of local high schools in 
the consolidated schools. This makes for the continua- 
tion of the one-room schools, or at best consolidation 
takes place in the direction of only consolidated graded 
schools, both eventualities resulting in a smaller aggre- 
gate high school attendance in the county than would 
be in the twenty or thirty typical consolidated schools, 
and these leading to the large district agricultural high 
school serving a group of counties. It will be seen that 
the consolidated school occupies a position of strategic 
importance in rural education affairs. That not more of 
these schools have to-day widened their field by teaching 
studies in agriculture and home economics is due in 
large part to a temporary lack of teachers with agricul- 
tural training. In consequence of this, there is at pres- 
ent almost an entire absence of cooperation with the 
state college, the state experiment station, and the ex- 
tension department, although every facility for articu- 
lating the consolidated school splendidly with all these 
agencies exists. If more county superintendents and 
more principals of consolidated schools attended courses 
in agriculture (even if only short courses) in the state 
colleges of their respective states, these men and women 
would learn how to utilize college, experiment station, 
extension department, and the national Department 
of Agriculture, and would come into close personal 



270 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

contact with leaders of thought in those lines of work, 
and would see their philosophy and viewpoint. Cir- 
cumstances and need will suggest numberless ways in 
which cooperation with the institutions named can be 
effected. Thus, for example, in several localities in 
southern states, consolidated schools have succeeded in 
interesting the agents of the farm demonstration divi- 
sion of the United States Department of Agriculture, 
and these men cooperate with the county superin- 
tendents and principals, and in their travels in the 
county make periodic visits to the consolidated schools, 
giving the boys and girls instruction which supple- 
ments that which they receive in working their one-acre 
demonstration fields on their home farms. Where a 
school farm is part of the equipment of the consoli- 
dated school, it can be made infinitely attractive and 
effective. Boys and girls going from the consolidated 
school to a city high school, or to college for a technical 
or professional education, will by no means be retarded 
by the agriculture and home economics instruction they 
have received, but on the contrary will be greatly bene- 
fited. The great, the important function of the consoli- 
dated school is to provide every farm boy and girl with 
a broadly vocational preparation so that whether grad- 
uating from the upper elementary grades or the high 
school, they will be qualified to return to the farm, to 
take their part in building up a strongly organized and 
profitable country life, and to make the family owned 
and family operated farm the fundamental unit of 
American agriculture. 



THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL 27 1 

The consolidated school is distinctly the product of 
evolution in country life affairs. Primarily designed to 
correct antiquated educational conditions, it has subse- 
quently developed into an effective instrumentality for 
redirecting and vitalizing country life. As yet, only few 
of these schools have gone beyond the initial stages in 
the organization of country life. Communities, however, 
are constantly discovering themselves. With this new 
viewpoint, is the wealth of material at hand for the 
organization of a full and enriched American country 
life not well-nigh inexhaustible? Can the rural so- 
ciologist find anywhere more fertile ground in which 
to plant his encouraging activities? Almost unlimited 
are the opportunities for service in the field of com- 
munity building, cooperation, and education in the 
open country, with the consolidated school as the solid 
basis. The solution of rural problems must grow out 
of the soil ; it will not come from " country life offices " 
in city skyscrapers. Wide travel has afforded the writer 
opportunity to observe the varied activities which con- 
solidated schools, assisted by good roads, rural telephones, 
and rural free delivery of mail, have drawn to and af- 
filiated with themselves or have in some way influenced. 
There have been found in active operation one or several 
of these activities : 

Grange, farmers' institutes, lecture courses, farmers' 
short course, farm demonstration union, farmers' wives' 
special short course in cooking, dressmaking, literature, 
and history ; art and crafts work ; boys' corn club, girls' 



272 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

canning and poultry club, boys' and girls' demonstration 
club, literary and oratorical club, young people's dra- 
matic club, intercounty oratorical club, athletic union, 
ladies' social circle, glee club, boys' temperance union, 
Sunday School, circulating library for books and maga- 
zines, agricultural reference library, debating society, 
baseball, basketball, and football teams. 

The rural community possessed of the enterprise and 
progressiveness to establish a consolidated school, will 
bring these same qualities to bear on its other internal 
problems. The present need is local leaders who possess 
vision and who will vigorously inaugurate dynamic 
activities. If the activities just enumerated did at all 
exist in the respective localities prior to the organization 
of the consolidated school district, they did so in a dis- 
connected manner and less efficiently. Greater strength, 
inspiration, and continuity of effort invariably result from 
the larger organization, and the larger educational, social, 
religious, economic, or even purely recreational society 
which centers at the consolidated school is even more 
than four, five, or ten times as useful as the corresponding 
number of societies of unaffiliated districts. 

The small school district has very little coherence 
socially. The dozen or more families form too small a 
body for a successful cooperation. There is less call for 
leadership, and funds for any purpose are always inade- 
quate. The larger unit of the consolidated school dis- 
trict with its 150 to 200 families affords a much better 
basis for organization. There is opportunity for real 



THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL 273 

leadership, and leadership is made worth while. Larger 
funds are available for any undertaking, larger plans can 
be formulated with more persons to take part in and sup- 
port them. The larger and strongly organized district is 
in position to make its voice heard and its influence felt 
in county and even in state affairs. With the system 
of district schools as at present organized, has not the 
school district a very impotent voice in county affairs? 

The fact that at last there has been discovered the unit 
upon which country life can be organized and which can 
be shaped to conform to its every possible need, is of far- 
reaching importance. And, what is most encouraging, 
it has grown up spontaneously. Detailed comparisons 
between the two types of schools were not attempted 
because the superiority of the consolidated school is 
now generally accepted as a demonstrated fact and this 
entire discussion has been made from that point of 
view. All local institutions and country life resources, 
whether they be racial or social or educational, deserve 
the best thought and fullest support of every citizen. 
The best agency through which country life and the coun- 
try school can be vitalized, a competent generation of 
farmers be reared and a permanent agriculture be es- 
tablished, is the consolidated rural school. 

SURVEY OF EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION 

Are the schools of your community of the older type of district 
school, or have the processes of consolidation and organization 
taken place ? If not, what are the objections to such consolida- 



274 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

tion ? Are the roads of the community fitted for a school wagon ? 
If not, would not such a movement tend to foster development 
of roads? What would be the probable outcome of a campaign 
for the consolidation of the schools of the community ? What is 
the real relationship between the schools and the community? 
Does the life of the community affect in any way the work of the 
school, or is the school work purely traditional ? Does the work of 
the school in any way affect the life of the community, or is it purely 
remote ? What can be done by the school — teacher and pupils 
— to bring about a closer relationship with the community ? Is 
there any feeling of resentment of community domination of the 
school's work ? 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Kern, O. J. Among Country Schools, pp. 240-282. 

Kern, O. J. Annual Report of Winnebago County, III. (Rockford), 
pp. 84-96. 

Knorr, George W. A Study of Fifteen Consolidated Rural 
Schools, their Organization, Cost, Efficiency, and Affiliated In- 
terests. Publication No. 6, Southern Education Board, 
Washington, D.C., p. 55. 

Graham, A. B. Centralized Schools in Ohio, 1907, Ohio State 
University, Columbus, Ohio, p. 24. 

Graham, A. B. Centralized Schools in Ohio. The Agricultural 
College Extension Bulletin, Vol. V, February, 1910. Sup- 
plement to No. 6, p. 24. 

Davenport, E. Consolidation of Our Schools. University of 
Illinois, p. 56. 

Fowler, William K. Consolidation of Districts, the Centralization 
of Rural Schools, and the Transportation of Pupils at Public 
Expense. Department of Public Instruction, Des Moines, 
Iowa. 

Riggs, John F. Conditions and Needs of Rural Schools. 1905. 
Department of Public Instruction, Des Moines, Iowa. 



THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL 275 

Barrett, Richard C. Consolidation of Districts and Transporta- 
tion of Pupils. Department of Education, Des Moines, 
Iowa. 

Kern, O. J. Consolidation of Country Schools. Education 
(Boston), pp. 246-247, December, 1907. 

Blake, E. C. Consolidation of Country Schools and the Con- 
veyance of Children, Forum, 1902, pp. 103-108. 

Nelson, Frank. Consolidation of Schools and Conveyance of 
Children. Review of Reviews, December, 1902, pp. 702-710. 

Kern, O. J. Consolidation of Rural Schools. Education (Boston), 
pp. 14-26, September, 1905. 

Consolidation of Rural Schools, The Interstate Schoolman, Novem- 
ber and December. 

Harvey, L. D. Consolidation of School Districts and Transporta- 
tion of Rural School Pupils at Public Expense. Madison, 
Wis., 1902, pp. 20. 

Olsen, J. W. Consolidation of Rural Schools and Transportation 
of Pupils at Public Expense. Bulletin No. 1. Reprint from 
Biennial Report of State Superintendent of Public Instruction 
for Minnesota, 1902, pp. 32. 

Dewey, Henry B. Consolidation of Rural Schools and Trans- 
portation of Pupils. Washington, 191 1, Bulletin No. 1, pp. 
120. 

Fairchild, E. T. Consolidation of Rural Schools. Topeka, 
Kan., 1 90S, pp. 48. 

Knorr, George W. Consolidated Rural Schools and Organiza- 
tion of a County System. Bulletin 232, United States Depart- 
ment of Agriculture, Washington, D.C., pp. 99. 

Consolidation and Transportation, New Hampshire. Department 
of Education, Concord, N.H., pp. 12. 

Kelley, Patrick H. Consolidation of School Districts in Michigan. 
Lansing, Mich., Bulletin No. 19, 1906, pp. 23. 

Brogden, L. C. Consolidating Schools and Public Transporta- 
tion of Pupils. Raleigh, 1911, pp. 135. 



276 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 

Hays, Willet M. Education for Country Life. Circular 84, 
United States Department of Agriculture, p. 40. 

Hays, Willet M. Our Farm Youth and the Public Schools. 
American Monthly Review of Reviews, October, 1903, pp. 

449-455- 
Proceedings of the National Education Association for the follow- 
ing years: 1908, pp. 804-811; 1902, pp. 224-231 and 793- 
798; 1903, pp. 919-936 ; 1904, pp. 313-316; 1906, pp. 338- 
348; 1907, pp. 277-279. 
Report of the Committee of Twelve on Rural Schools, 1905, Uni- 
versity of Chicago, Chicago, 111. 
Reports of the United States Commissioner of Education for the 
following years: 1901, pp. 161-215; 1903, pp. 2405-2414; 
1904, pp. 2277-2279; 1905, p. 193. 
Reports of State Superintendent of Public Instruction for the 
following years : 
Indiana, 1904, pp. 271-319; 1906, pp. 617-693; 1908, p. 18. 
Ohio, 1905, pp. 14-16 and 314-317. 
Nebraska, 1904, pp. 225-282; 1906, pp. 341-352. 
Iowa, 1905, pp. 225-241 ; 1906, pp. 142, 143. 
Illinois, 1906, pp. 24-27 and 136-148. 
Massachusetts, 1904 and subsequent years. 
Connecticut, 1902, pp. 10-12 and 332-336 ; 1905, pp. 204-207. 
Vermont, 1906, pp. 28-41 ; 1902, pp. 38-49. 
Kansas, 1906, pp. 17, 18 and 194, 195. 
Jones, Frank L. Rural Schools. 1902, Indianapolis. 
The Consolidation of Rural Schools and the Transportation of Pupils 
(Special Number). The Western Journal of Education (San 
Francisco). June, 1903. 
Tenth Annual Report of the Illinois Farmers' Institute, Springfield, 

111., 1905, pp. 208-213. 
Lonsdorf, H. H. The Consolidation of Country Schools. De- 
partment of Agriculture, Harrisburg, Pa., 1901, p. 89. 
Fletcher, G. T. The Consolidation of Schools and the Conveyance 



THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL 277 

of Children. Bulletin of State Board of Education, Boston, 
Mass., p. 25. 

Graham, A. B. The Township High School of Ohio. Agricultural 
College Extension Bulletin, Columbus, Ohio, Vol. Ill, February, 
1908. No. 6, p. 20. 

Kern, O. J. The Consolidation of Country Schools. Rockford, 
111., Special Bulletin, December, 1903, p. 8. 

Foght, Harold W. The American Rural School, its Characteristics, 
its Future, and its Problems. 

Aswold, James B. The Consolidation of School Districts. De- 
partment of Education, Baton Rouge, p. 77. 

Upham, A. A. Transportation of Children at Public Expense. 
Educational Review, October, 1900, pp. 241-251. 

Symmes, Sam D. Transportation of School Children to Consoli- 
dated Schools. Crawfordsville, Ind. 

Diehl, H. A. Trumbull County, Ohio, Centralized Schools. 
Prairie Farmer, Cleveland, Ohio, February 3, 1906, and 
February 10, 1906. 



npHE following pages contain advertisements of a 
few of the Macmillan books on kindred subjects. 



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By Professor L. H. BAILEY 

Director of the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell University- 
Four Volumes. Each, cloth, 12mo. Uniform binding, attractively boxed. IS. 00 
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In this set are included three of Professor Bailey's most popular books as well as a 
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THE RURAL MANUALS 

Edited by L. H. BAILEY 

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